Silence is the essential condition of happiness.

Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.

Thought precedes action as lighting does thunder.

It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.

Genius: 1. to believe your own thought. To believe that what is true for you is ultimately true. 2. a sledgehammer. 3. the fruit of labour and thought. 4. soul. 5. the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. 6. something one can become.

I live, which is the main point.

At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.