"I will so live as knowing myself to have come into the world for others. ... I shall recognize the world as my proper country. Whenever nature or reason shall demand my last breath I shall depart with the testimony that I have loved a good conscience, useful pursuits — that I have encroached upon the liberty of no one, least of all my own."
* * *
"Of what bad practice have you cured yourself today? What vice have you resisted? In what respect are you the better? Rash anger will be moderated and finally cease when it finds itself daily confronted with its judge. What, then, is more useful than this custom of thoroughly weighing the actions of the entire day?"
* * *
"Let us ask what is best, not what is most customary; what may place us firmly in the possession of an everlasting felicity, not what has received the approbation of the vulgar — the worst interpreter of truth. Now I call the vulgar the common herd of all ranks and conditions."
* * *
"That man is of the stupidest sort who values another either by his dress or by his condition. Is he a slave? He is, it may be, free in mind. He is the true slave who is a slave to cruelty, to ambition, to avarice, to pleasure. Love cannot co-exist with fear."