We cannot conquer fate and necessity yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.
The present like a note in music is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.
There is no easy path leading out of life and few are the easy ones that lie within it.
Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.
Men like nails lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
Friendship may sometimes step a few paces in advance of truth.
Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.
As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them ... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that...
The writings of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.