For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories... The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

God is a geometrician.

Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.