“Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.”

Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Winter is the night of vegetation.

A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.

What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

The heart contracts as the pocket expands.

Hope is the best part of our riches.

Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong.

I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.

Living in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives.

Living in each moment with the awareness that nothing is permanent is an invitation to love more deeply, to speak more honesty, and to align with whispers of our soul.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

The awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.