Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

That government is best which governs least.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

Things do not change we change.