Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.

Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Hath God obliged himself not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge?

Judgement holds in me a magisterial seat, at least it carefully tries to. It lets my feelings go their way, both hatred and friendship, even the friendship I bear myself, without being changed and corrupted by them.

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.