In all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best. For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher, an art; and the highest in doing one thing does all, or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly he sees the likeness of all that is done rightly.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

By seeking and blundering we learn.

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.

The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.

Men are joined by conviction, sundered by opinion.

The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.