Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.

Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.