“Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.”

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Each person’s work is always a portrait of himself.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.

A man’s mind grows narrow in a narrow place.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Truth allows no choice.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.

Character is a wish for a perfect education.

It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.

Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.

Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.

I yearn for things, but at the same time I am just peaceful.

Even as a child I had a strong relationship with yearning and desire. And loss. Those things spoke to me.

All the events of our life are materials of which we can make what we will.