Nature in denying us perennial youth has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble.
Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.
The profoundest affinities are those most readily felt.
The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.