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.

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.

The artist's conception of his art or the scientist's of his science is usually as great as his conception of his own worth is small.

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

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

It's interesting to observe that almost all truly worthy men have simple manners, and that simple manners are almost always taken as a sign of little worth

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.