And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect.

There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts.

Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.

My third maxim was to try always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to accustom myself to believing that there is nothing entirely in our power except our thoughts, so that after we have done our best regarding things external to us, everything in which we do not succeed is for us absolutely impossible.

Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction.