Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock.

There is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain

Not to feel one's misfortunes is not human, not to bear them is not manly.

The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture.

Where reason fails, time oft has worked a cure.

Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.