No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

[W]hat counts is that one perceives excellence and dares to give it expression, which sounds little but is in fact a great deal.

The spirit from which we act is the principal matter.

Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through.

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.