It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen. Spricht man zu ihnen, so übersetzen sie alles in ihre eigene Sprache, und so wird es alsobald etwas ganz anderes. Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchmen. Whenever you say anything or talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and right away it is something completely different.

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

Some of our weaknesses are born in us, others are the result of education; it is a question which of the two gives us most trouble.

What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?