Why have only two or three ways of life, and not thousands? Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.
We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can.
To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
The years teach much which the days never know.
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and at the same time she arms and equips another animal to destroy it.
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.
Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion.
A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair’s breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
