...why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?

...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will.

All the shrewdness of 'man' seeks one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.

The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, the opulent often the best sense of the rustic, the dissolute often the best sense of the moral, and the doubter often the best sense of the religious.

It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not.

Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.

During the first period of our lives the greatest danger is not to take the risk. When once the risk has been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking at first one turns aside and serves trivialities; in the second case, by risking too much, one turns aside to the fantastic and perhaps to presumption.