First let a man teach himself, and then he will be taught by others.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.

Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.

You don't love if you don't take the beloved's faults for virtues.

The human mind will not be confined to any limits.

Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach us? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.