What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.

It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.

Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.

Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.

Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.

Women of the world crave excitement.

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.