Conversation is an art in which a person must compete with all mankind.
The god of cannibals is a cannibal, the god of crusaders is a crusader, and the god of merchants is a merchant.
Most men and most women have one more spouse than they should.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ultimately, love is nothing more than a reflection of people's personal dignity.
In youth we are reformers, in old age, conservatives. The conservative seeks welfare, the reformer, justice and truth.
In extravagance there is hope, in mediocrity - none.
In this world, every man is not so much a creator as a forerunner. Humans carry within themselves the prophecy of the future.
In fact, there is no history; there are only biographies.
What is important is not the isolation of the place, but the independence of the spirit. Poets who lived in urban areas remained hermits anyway.
The great deeds show that the universe belongs to every man who dwells in it.
Remarkable men are more marked by the breadth and vastness of their views than by their originality.
The greatest honor you can do to truth is to let yourself be led by it.
Faith consists in recognizing the arguments of the soul; unbelief consists in denying them.
The influence of ideas is proportional. as objects of science, they are available only to some. but all men can rise because of their piety or passion. And no man touches these divine natures without becoming in some measure divine. Like a new soul, they renew the body. We become physically more mobile and brighter; we float in the air; life stops being hard and it seems to us that it will never be like this again. No one is afraid in their clear and bright presence of old age, or misfortune, or death, for, being among them, man is carried far beyond the bounds of the changing. As we look at the empty nature of Justice and Truth, we become familiar with the difference between absolute and conventional or relative. We know the absolute. We exist as if for the first time, we become immortal, because we understand that time and space are the essence of material relations; that they have no affinity with the perception of truth or virtuous will.
In any creation of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts.
All other pleasures are worthless. How much suffering from love.
All good orators started out as poor orators.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Every wall is a door.
You will be able to take care of your secret better than anyone else.
The hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he retains his courage for five minutes longer.
Years teach us many things that days do not know.
Even if my dinner guests don't look at the clock, they should be able to read the time on my face.
Money is sometimes too expensive.
Not always the hero's children are heroes; and it is even less likely that his grandchildren will be heroes.
For friendship to be great, only one condition is needed: that of being able to manage without it.
The virtues of society are the vices of the saint.
Virtuous people draw their strength even from weaknesses and flaws.
Kindness must not be without firmness, because then it cannot be called kindness. When love is preached full of many whimpers and tears, we must instead learn to hate.