Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.

There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Without properly kept accounts it is impossible to maintain truth in its pristine purity.

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it is better to listen to what it has to say.

A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the toughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road.

If I had to define life in a word, it would be: Life is creation.