I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation." -If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was I.

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, and suchlike accidents; but as to death, we can experience it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it