The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves, and to suffice for our own happiness. Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Ever in our power, always leading us to something new, never cloying, we ride, serene and sublime, above the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating truth and nature, matter and motion, the laws which bind up their existence, and that external being who made and bound them up by these laws. Let this be our employ. Leave the bustle and tumult of society to those who have not talents to occupy themselves without them.
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others.
But let us now try the virtues of your mathematical balance, and as you have put into one scale the burdens of friendship, let me put its comforts into the other. For assuredly nobody will care for him who cares for nobody. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. From the presence of our charming companion. They were pleasing because she seemed pleased.