But tell me: how did gold get to be the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and gentle in its brilliance; it always gives itself. Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold get to be the highest value. The giver's glance gleams like gold. A golden brilliance concludes peace between the moon and the sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue and useless, it is gleaming and gentle in its brilliance: a gift-giving virtue is the highest virtue.

The last Christian died on a cross.

Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps.

Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart--and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

Every tradition grows continually more venerable, and the more remote its origins, the more this is lost sight of. The veneration paid the tradition accumulates from generation to generation, until it at last becomes holy and excites awe.

To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to theory.