Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?

Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.

There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.

The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great.

In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.