...the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough....You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life?

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.

A great step toward independence is a good-humoured stomach.

Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.

Away with the world's opinion of you-it's always unsettled and divided.

We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end to them.

Those whom fortune has never favored are more joyful than those whom she has deserted.