In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy.

Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.

...Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home.

Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home.

Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.

Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.