What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

God is near you, is with you, is inside you.

I would rather be sick than idle.

The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.

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

He who asks with timidity invites a refusal.

Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.