Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.

Everything that exceeds the bounds of moderation has an unstable foundation.

They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites.

Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.

Whenever you hold a fellow creature in distress, remember that he is a man.

Fate rules the affairs of men, with no recognizable order.