Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.

We blame equally him who is too proud to put a proper value on his own merit and him who prizes too highly his spurious worth.

God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.

One criticizes the English for carrying their teapots wherever they go, even lugging them up Mount Etna. But doesn't every nationhave its teapot, in which, even when traveling, it brews the dried bundles of herbs brought from home?

Whatever is the lot of humankind I want to taste within my deepest self. I want to seize the highest and the lowest, to load its woe and bliss upon my breast, and thus expand my single self titanically and in the end go down with all the rest.

The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.