“A great destiny needs a generous diet. What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!”

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man’s life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.

It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

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.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

Your destiny is too great, your assignment too important, your time too valuable. Don’t let fear intimidate you.

Everything that happens, happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

Luck and destiny are the excuses of the world’s failures.

Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you.