Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

Boundless in your charity, but shrewd and cautious as a lender, you delight all those today whom you made beggars the day before.

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

The sun of a prince's good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people.

No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs.

Why do villains have so much influence? Because the honest people are terribly dense.

A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.