Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.

What is most vile and despicable about money is that it even confers talent. And it will do so until the end of the world.

Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams.

You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all.

At that point I ought to have gone away, but a strange sensation rose up in me, a sort of defiance of fate, a desire to challenge it, to put out my tongue at it. I laid down the largest stake allowe-four thousand gulden-and lost it. Then, getting hot, I pulled out all I had left, staked it on the same number, and lost again, after which I walked away from the table as though I were stunned. I could not even grasp what had happened to me.

I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse.

You are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so put intellect above everything.