Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

You are treading the path to your greatness: no one shall follow you here! Your passage has effaced the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.

I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many.

A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach . . .

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu , virtue free of moral acid).