Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.

Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.

I am like a book, with pages that have stuck together for want of use: my mind needs unpacking and the truths stored within must be turned over from time to time, to be ready when occasion demands.

We deliberate about the parcels of life, but not about life itself, and so we arrive all unawares at its different epochs, and have the trouble of beginning all again. And so finally it is that we do not walk as men confidently towards death, but let death come suddenly upon us.

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.

I don’t mind citing a bad author if the line is good.

Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.