One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.

The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.

A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.

The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.

In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it.

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.

Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.