People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.

...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.

The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.

We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others

The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use. Habit may still attach us to each other, but we feel ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might be compared to old married people without the tie of children.

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.