“Being mortal, never pray for an untroubled life. Rather, ask the God to give you an enduring heart.”

He who labors diligently need never despair for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.

How sweet is life, can we but choose with whom to live it: to live for oneself is no life.

Conscience is a God to all mortals.

Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado.

Of all the wild beasts of land or sea, the wildest is woman.

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

Art is man’s refuge from adversity.

The chief beginning of evil is goodness in excess.

The workman still is greater than his work.

At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool.

If you want to live your whole life free from pain you must become either a god or else a corpse. Consider other men’s troubles and that will comfort you.

Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.

Hope saves a person in the midst of misfortunes.

Man must be prepared for every event of life, for there is nothing that is durable.

The good man makes others good.

No man alive can say, This shall not happen to me.

I do think I have an ability to record sensual and emotional facts and factoids, to construct a convincing surface of what life feels like, both physical life and emotional life.

The Last Argument of Kings.

Wars–and what is war except crime on a mass scale?–destroy rather than produce.

You remember too much,” my mother said to me recently. “Why hold onto all that?” And I said, “where can I put it down?

A boy and a girl started dating after he backed his car into hers.

Lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

I thrive on that; I rise to the occasion of the circumstances.

Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.