The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.

Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

To drink in the spirit of a place you should be not only alone but unhurried.

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.

Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that 'a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.' At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.