Men of much depth of mind can bear a great deal of counsel; for it does not easily deface their own character, nor render their purposes indistinct.
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.
Experience is the extract of suffering.
There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.
Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
Every happiness is a hostage to fortune.
Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.
A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.
It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.
Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.
Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.
