I may be wrong, but it seems rare in our age to find a widely praised person whose own mouth is not the source of that praise.

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 end of pain we take as happiness.

Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age.

I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare.

Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards.

What do you do there, moon, in the sky? Tell me what you do, silent moon. When evening comes you rise and go contemplating wastelands; then you set.