A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, Know Thyself.

A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Each day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth; every fresh morning a little youth; every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.