“He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives.”

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

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!

It’s still too early to say how my wife will influence my life. But I do already know that it’s sometimes hard work living with her.

Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom.

Notice how you breathe can influence how you feel in any moment.

The action that I’ve started, sometime I’ll have to face. My influence in motion, rebounding back through space.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

My dad was the biggest influence on my life because he was never boring.