The word you master is your slave, the word you let go becomes your master.
To be at peace in both worlds, follow two rules: be generous with your friends and restrained with your enemies.
It is best to write as bees collect honey: not leaving the flowers untouched, but taking them to the hive, where something unique, different and better emerges from the many and varied.
Perhaps I will somehow be allowed to remain alive, and when I leave the world, my writings will come to light and show that I was a student of the truth... And who knows if not myself, with my rebellious and fearless soul of ghosts, will I make way for those who have the strength to go forward?
In human affairs there is nothing perfect, and there is no mortal whom even the most timid critic does not find reason to vilify.
With what I was at first wasteful, then generous, I want to become considerate, stingy, stingy. Time teaches us, need haunts us, there is no room for jokes; believe me, they will crush and crush us in the midst of our labors, if we do not awake and resist: if we do not resist, with all the strength of our souls, we shall be destroyed.
Everything becomes more difficult, towards the end, the most fatal mistake is the last, and one fatal hour pronounces the sentence for all the years of life.
Every dying man is already old because, for everyone, the end of life is his old age; but few die mature, and none, after living long enough, except those who have convinced themselves that there is no difference between the shorter and the longer, both being subject to the same end.
For man there is nothing more natural than work, man was born for it, as the bird is made for flight and the fish for swimming.
If even the stomach of one and the same man does not always demand one and the same food, much less must the mind always feed on one and the same thing.
Even if fate is friendly to someone, it only happens to trick him in its own way. She rises only to make the fall even more painful. So enjoying success is just one of the endless human wanderings.
If man wants to get rid of his miserable condition and sincerely and ardently desires it, such a desire cannot be without success.
There is a law of envy: the envious torment themselves with their vices, becoming all the more unhappy, the happier our circumstances seem to them.
Man's life on earth is not only military service but also battle.
Throughout my life I have convinced myself that most of the time, even in the most unnoticed form, is occupied by discussions with friends; friends are remarkable robbers of time.
I once thought I could not bring it to an end without the presence of woman, and now I fear her worse than death, and though often the worst temptations trouble me, when I remember what woman is, how all temptations disappear on the spot I regain my freedom and peace.
Whoever is able to express how something burns him, he is only covered by a fire.
Physical presence harms glory.
Love knows admirably how to convince.
The care of my own soul is enough for me; oh, if I had such power!
A new day brings with it many novelties, no reversal of fortune is eternal, help often comes from where we least expect it, it is never too late to lose hope, salvation is often unexpected.
The chatter of the quarrelsome is usually related to anger.
You can borrow mind from someone else, borrow brilliance, but let's beware of repeating someone's words: the first resemblance is not seen, the second comes to light; the first makes us poets, the second, monkeys.
And the wonderful ones can be shamefully loved.
It derails us that we stubbornly cling to old views and find it difficult to let them go.
How much more meritorious, in our opinion, are the educators of the soul compared to those of the body, anyone who knows how to give both the right value and recognize the fact that the first give us an immortal gift, and the others, an uncertain and temporary one, understands.
Not to suffer from poverty and not to possess anything useless, not to command others and not to be subject - this is my goal.
I don't want a ruler to restrain me or constrain me: let the ruler see to his own, and let me leave my eyes alone, and my own opinion and freedom, not to prevent me either from going where I want, or to overlook something, nor to achieve the impossible, to be permitted to take the shortest way, and if I have patience, the straightest, to hasten or go slowly, to turn aside and turn back
You can't keep books locked up like in a prison; they must go from library to memory.
There is nothing so perfect that there is no more mistake.