It is only in misery that we recognize the hand of God leading good men to good.

The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

Where confidence is wanting, the most beautiful flower in the garland of love is missing.

Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.

Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.

He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.