Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

The best ideas are common property.

Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.

Human affairs are like a chess-game: only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players. Life is like an earthen pot: only when it is shattered, does it manifest its emptiness.

He who has fostered the sweet poison of love by fondling it, finds it too late to refuse the yoke which he has of his own accord assumed.

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

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.