Chess is a good way to learn, to keep your brain fit and the ego in check, a mental form of your local gymnasium. Those who see chess merely as a means of self-proof make the game experience uncomfortable and drive many of the better, more sensitive brains to analysis, correspondence, problems, studies and the like.

Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words.

We call an intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention.

God considers not the action, but the spirit of the action.

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.

And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weaknesses. All men, I believe, are under a necessity of paying tribute at some time or other to Love, and it is vain to strive to avoid it. I was a philosopher, yet this tyrant of the mind triumphed over all my wisdom; his darts were of greater force than all my reasonings, and with a sweet constraint he led me wherever he pleased.

The key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.