The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.

My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy— the purest joy of life.

I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Mere curiosity adds wings to every step.