If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if he has a headache.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue.

He only is a well-made man who has a good determination.

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it might deify both.

He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.