[W]hat counts is that one perceives excellence and dares to give it expression, which sounds little but is in fact a great deal.

I must consider more closely this cycle of good and bad days which I find coursing within myself. Passion, attachment, the urge to action, inventiveness, performance, order all alternate and keep their orbit; cheerfulness, vigor, energy, flexibility and fatigue, serenity as well as desire. Nothing disturbs the cycle for I lead a simple life, but I must still find the time and order in which I rotate.

One glance, one word from you gives more pleasure than all the wisdom of this world.

Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.

If you don't know foreign languages, you don't know anything about your own.