And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.

Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...

Man only likes counting his grief, he doesn't count his happiness. But if he were to count properly, he'd see that there's enough of both lots for him.

I love the night! It's not uncommon for me to see the light of a new day before closing my eyes on the old one.

In some crucial cases ... repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power completely to articulate it.

Happiness has a bad rap. People say it shouldn't be your goal in life. Oh, yes it should.

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.

I have watched lives change. I have seen women gain confidence.

It's our challenges and obstacles that give us layers of depth and make us interesting.

The fatal mistake is waiting for life's circumstances to be right before we begin. Simply begin with your heart, look deeply into it and trust what you feel. Practice knowing and you will know.

You might call this innocence. I had a sense of another world that had not been spoken of to me.

I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.

It’s not about revenues: the fundamental economics in digital business is scale and margins. The top line has become the bottom line.