Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.

So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.

The spirit, Sir, is one of mockery.

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.

I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.

His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.

To be truly happy is a question of how we begin, and not how we end, of what we want and not what we have.