The learned man knows that he is ignorant.

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.

Upon the first goblet he read this inscription, monkey wine; upon the second, lion wine; upon the third, sheep wine; upon the fourth, swine wine. These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, that which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the third, that which stupefies; finally the last, that which brutalizes.

Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.

It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

What a gloomy thing, not to know the address of one's soul.