And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.

Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of beingcreated so as to understand them to some degree.

The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a religion of surrendering to it.

Whatever is the object of a saint's hope is the subject of his prayer.

I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.

The thinking person has the strange characteristic to like to create a fantasy in the place of the unsolved problem, a fantasy that stays with the person even when the problem has been solved and truth made its appearance.