“The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips though they cannot speak.”

Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly.

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.

One of the greatest of a great man’s qualities is success; ‘t is the result of all the others; ‘t is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.

It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of fate, and see how our destinies turn on a minute’s delay or advance.

I set it down as a maxim, that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social.

To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don’t want a rose to sing.

Women are jealous of cigars, they regard them as a strong rival.

Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang, “Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long.”

Never marry with the expectation of changing a person.

A pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and enflame him; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so prizes them that he would give all his life to possess ’em.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most trifling actions.

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

The best of women are hypocrites.

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?

Before making a decision, ask inside for guidance. Be patient and await an answer. Act only when you feel calm and certain.

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won.

I don’t regret the decision to retire. My body was losing its edge. I was taking longer to recover from injuries. You have to get out at some point.

Eventually, you have to stop picking a fight with your true nature and decide to seek the joy that underlies it all.

The health of your marriage tomorrow will be determined by the decisions you make today.

Every decision I make is a choice between a grievance and a miracle.

You get to decide what energy you choose to download in any moment. No one but you gets to decide who you wish to be.

But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.