The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?

We find our energies are actually cramped when we are overanxious to succeed.

And if nobody reads me, shall I have wasted my time, when I have beguiled so many idle hours with such pleasant and profitable reflections?

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice.

He that is a friend to himself, know; he is a friend to all.