“The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
“Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey
“You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
“The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.
“Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves
“Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us; footprints on the sands of time.
“Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be
“You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man's bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs
“There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create
“The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough
“Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes - the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries
“I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work
“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it
“In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity; On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools - that's vanity
“Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more