Ah! my poor brain is racked and crazed, My spirit and senses amazed!

We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding.

Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.

Rash, inexperienced youth holds itself a chosen instrument, and allows itself unbounded license.

I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.