No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.

Let me take up your metaphor. Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones, never.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: I warm'd both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

All schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be frequented for exercise than for weight.

The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature.

Contentment is better than divinations or visions.