The good four. Honest with ourselves and with whatever is friend to us; courageous toward the enemy; generous toward the vanquished; polite-always that is how the four cardinal virtues want us.

There was at all events one advantage in the choice of this day to my birth; my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day of public rejoicing.

'God himself cannot exist without wise men' - Luther said, and was right. But 'God can exist even less without unwise men' - that good old Luther did not say.

Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.

One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one's life.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

Everything that has been is eternal: the sea will wash it up again.