He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.

If the best company is that which we leave feeling most satisfied with ourselves, it follows that it is the company we leave most bored.

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.

There are some centuries which - apart from everything else - in the art and other disciplines presume to remake everything because they know how to make nothing.

That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal.

Men do not so much hate an evil-doer, or evil itself, as they hate the man who calls evil by its real name.

Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.