If by being overstudious, we impair our health and spoil our good humor, let us give it up.

I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.

We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

No spiritual mind remains within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its own strength.

Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.