There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much

Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to reach it with closed eyes, lest we should be scorched.

Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to opposition.

Merely to breathe freely does not mean to live.

Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. ...For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

If youth is a fault, it is one that one gets rid of soon enough.