“You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”

“We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.”

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”

“What difference does it make how much is laid away in a man's safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another's and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already? You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”

“No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.”

“What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?”

“When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”