A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.

What am I to choose? "Choose what you please, as long as you choose." There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.

There is nothing in which a horse's power is better revealed than in a neat, clean stop.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.

It is a rare life that remains orderly even in private.

For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.