Silence alone is great; all else is feebleness . . . Perform with all your heart your long and heavy task. . . . Then as do I, say naught, but suffer and die.

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.

What it values most of all is the sum total of events and the advance of civilization, which carries individuals along with it; but, indifferent to details, it cares less to have them real than noble or, rather, grand and complete.

History is a novel for which the people is the author.

Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.

Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.