Fashion is nothing more than the temporary custom of rich and idle people who make it their principal business to study the external elegance of life..

A perfect life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share in its strength and discipline, but can also go forth….

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest..

I wonder how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness..

In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing..

Painting does not come from intelligence so much, as from sight and feeling and invention..

Unless a man works he cannot find out what he is able to do..

High culture always isolates, always drives men out of their class, and makes it more difficult for them to share naturally and easily the common cla….

Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself i….