My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.

Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable.

No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.

Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do; they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart.

As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them ... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsafe and unsatisfactory.

I sometimes think that the most plaintive ditty has brought a fuller joy and of longer duration to its composer that the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.