Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease.

The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.

Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before.

Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.

There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.