I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a religion of surrendering to it.

Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.

A well-bred carriage is difficult to imitate; for in strictness it is negative, and it implies a long-continued previous training.

Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated, Especially since it lives and lets me live.