Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore thyself and bore the students?

No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.

The philosophers must station themselves in the middle.

The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.

Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me.

I am very anxious to please the public, particularly as it lives and lets live.