To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy is to set your own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them.

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end; but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures.

English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.

The finest poems of the world have been expedients to get bread.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.