“True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.”

The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas.

Were a man’s sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.

Content thyself to be obscurely good.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.

Nothing that isn’t a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion.

We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that’s the very next step to being dull.

There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections

Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.

Great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women.

It is emphatically the case that life could not arise spontaneously in a primeval soup from its kind.

I’m not a pop act, churning stuff out really quickly. I find the music that arises from that style of working is distracted, not particularly profound.

Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises.

Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.

First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, ‘I believe,’ three times.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.