We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.

'Well,' said Red Jacket [to someone complaining that he had not enough time], 'I suppose you have all there is.'

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.