My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake.

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.

The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.