science has now been for a long time - and to an ever-increasing extent - a collective enterprise. Actually, new results are always, in fact, the work of specific individuals; but, save perhaps for rare exceptions, the value of any result depends on such a complex set of interrelations with past discoveries and possible future researches that even the mind of the inventor cannot embrace the whole.

The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication.

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality, they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years. But above this level, far above, separated by an abyss, is the level where the highest things are achieved. These things are essentially anonymous.