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.

The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.

It is equally pointless to weep because we won't be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

I have a vocabulary all my own. I "pass the time" when it is wet and disagreeable. When it is fine I do not wish to pass it; I ruminate it and hold on to it. We should hasten over the bad, and settle upon the good.