It’s in the very trickery that it pleases me. But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein.

Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.

A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.

There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness.

The man who can be compelled knows not how to die.

Just as so many rivers, so many showers of rain from above, so many medicinal springs do not alter the taste of the sea, so the pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. For it maintains its balance, and over all that happens it throws its own complexion, because it is more powerful than external circumstances.

There is no genius free from some tincture of madness