Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

If you're sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward.

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

But perhaps this is the greatest charm of life: it puts a gold-embroidered veil of lovely potentialities over itself, promising, resisting, modest, mocking, sympathetic, seductive. Yes, life is a woman!

Usually youth is for freedom and reform, maturity for judicious compromise, and old age for stability and repose.