Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed and rightly.

Whereas a prolonged life is not necessarily better, a prolonged death is necessarily worse.

No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.

Whatever has overstepped its due bounds is always in a state of instability.

To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.

One must take all one's life to learn how to leave, and what will perhaps make you wonder more, one must take all one's life to learn how to die.

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: " Is this the condition that I feared?"