Why do people not confess vices? It is because they have not yet laid them aside. It is a waking person only who can tell their dreams.

Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen, shall torture all the more.

Let us fight the battle-retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.

You find in some a sort of graceless modesty, that makes them ashamed to requite an obligation.

As gratitude is a necessary, and a glorious virtue, so also it is an obvious, a cheap, and an easy one; so obvious that wherever there is life there is a place for it; so cheap, that the covetous man may be gratified without expense, and so easy that the sluggard may be so likewise without labor.

It is pleasant at times to play the madman.

...the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough....You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life?