The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.

It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel - they get to know each other better.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.

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.

If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much

Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.

We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies