Whatsoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. - Charles William Eliot

"We should daily repeat to ourselves," I exclaimed, "that we should not interfere with our friends, unless to leave them in possession of their own joys, and increase their happiness by sharing it with them!"

the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better.

"You allow that we designate a disease as mortal when Nature is so severely attacked, and her strength so far exhausted, that she cannot possibly recover her former condition under any change that may take place. "Now, my good friend, apply this to the mind; observe a man in his natural, isolated condition; consider how ideas work, and how impressions fasten on him, till at length a violent passion seizes him, destroying all his powers of calm reflection, and utterly ruining him.