Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age

The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.

There is no dunce like a mature dunce.

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.

The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history.

Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.