We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds.

Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.