Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.

The book-keeping of benefits is simple: it is all expenditure; if any one returns it, that is clear gain; if he does not return it, it is not lost, I gave it for the sake of giving.

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.

A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.