A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.

Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.

No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.

It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.

When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.

Kindness is the golden thread that holds society together.