What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

What opium is instilled into all disaster? It shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction,but the most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought.

Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.