If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to recognize human nature for what it is and of wishing to turn men into machines.

How a person masters his or her fate is more important than what that fate is.

The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ....perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show.

True resignation, which always brings with it the confidence that unchangeable goodness will make even the disappointment of our hopes, and the contradictions of life, conducive to some benefit, casts a grave but tranquil light over the prospect of even a toilsome and troubled life.

Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.