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

No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.

I am the spirit that negates. And rightly so, for all that comes to be Deserves to perish wretchedly; 'Twere better nothing would begin. Thus everything that that your terms, sin, Destruction, evil represent— That is my proper element.

To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

It is a maxim of wise government to treat people not as they should be but as they actually are.