A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

Those who show pity and are always ready to help during times of trouble are seldom the same ones who rejoice in our joy: when others are happy they have nothing to do, they become superfluous and lose their feeling of superiority, and so they easily show their displeasure.

Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.

We fear our neighbor's hostile mood because we are afraid that this mood will lead him to penetrate our secrets.

You implanted your highest goal into the heart of those passions: then they became your virtues and joys.

The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.

It is not your sin - it is your moderation that cries to heaven; your very sparingness in sin cries to heaven!