“We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it.”

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!

I’m not really a first-move kind of gal.

There are eternal consequences resulting from all our thoughts, words and actions, of which we take far too little account.

Your biography becomes your biology. This biography includes the totality of your choices, the things you feed your body – you thoughts, your actions, your food – the thing you feed your life.

You can’t read about push ups. You gotta do them.

An intention is a quality of consciousness that you bring to an action.

What I ought to do and what I feel like doing are seldom the same thing.

Everyone is saying that I’m retiring, but I want to solemnly declare, that I don’t want to retire, I just want to do things a bit less dangerous to my body, less dangerous action.

Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, what do I want to do everyday for the rest of my life. Do that!