We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

Age and Aging

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

Change

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.

Common Sense

Common sense is calculation applied to life.

Fate

Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.

Greatness

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary -- they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.

Marriage

To marry unequally is to suffer equally.

Music

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

Passion

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

Power

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.

Responsibility

To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.

Self-improvement

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature… is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

Things and Little Things

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.