The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.

Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.

No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.