“Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.”

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

For truly it is to be noted, that children’s plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one’s own goodness.

The thing I fear most is fear.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.

The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.

They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.

A cold and moist brain is an inseparable companion to folly.

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

Fear is our boon companion but never our master.

Giving no pain to any creature, let him slowly accumulate spiritual merit, for the sake ,of acquiring a companion to the next world, just as the white ant ,gradually raises its hill.

Around, around, Companions all, take your ground, And name the bell with joy profound! CONCORDIA is the word we’ve found Most meet to express the harmonious sound, That calls to those in friendship bound.