I obviously do everything to be "hard to understand" myself

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today

People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

The charm of knowledge would be small indeed, were it not that there is so much shame to be overcome on the way to it.

The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.

If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago.