If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is not befitting the human mind."

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed -- my dearest pleasure when free.

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos."

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.