Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, — "Always do what you are afraid to do."

"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed. Here's another one of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life."

A man is made by the books he reads.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.