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The soul has wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense.

The truth is, that our nature is essentially restless in its character: we very soon get tired of having nothing to do; it is intolerable boredom.

From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports.

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.

Expect no healthy conclusions from me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.

If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both played a poor figure in that, and neglected one that is within your powers.

The strong man who in the confidence of sturdy health courts the sternest activities of life and rejoices in the hardihood of constant labor may still have lurking near his vitals the unheeded disease that dooms him to sudden collapse.

To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul

The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it.

But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.

There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet every body fools us out of it that has a mind to it.

Am I equipped for nothing but to lie among the bed-clothes and keep warm?

I had, and still have, determined perseverance, but I soon found that it was in vain to occupy my mind beyond a certain time.

Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy.

Self-love is mainly to blame, making people fond of being first and aspiring in all matters, and insatiably desirous to engage in everything.

In the next place, it is false that those that have little to do are easy in mind.

The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or the place.

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality

It never seems to them that they have served enough; they have a fine impatience of their virtues.

Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution.

Rest and recreation are also necessary to his physical life.

The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena.