Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!

The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it.

Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?

If the advice of a fool for once happens to be good, it requires a wise man to carry it out.

For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.

As the stag which the huntsman has hit flies through bush and brake, over stock and stone, thereby exhausting his strength but not expelling the deadly bullet from his body; so does experience show that they who have troubled consciences run from place to place, but carry with them wherever they go their dangerous wounds.

Well was it said by a man of sagacity that dancing was a sort of privileged and reputable folly, and that the best way to be convinced of this was to close the ears and judge of it by the eyes alone.