What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.

The world is full of contradiction.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

We can really respect a man only if he doesn't always look out for himself.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is moat thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy boat among miners; and so with everything else.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.