Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another’s dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.

I do not wish more external goods, — neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain.

“I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.” 

“I didn't say I liked it Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.” 

“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.” 

“A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.” 

I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new burdens.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

To fill the hour – that is happiness.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine. 

“You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.” 

“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.” 

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.” 

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” 

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” 

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Dare to let your dreams reach beyond you.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.