The essence of life consists in thinking, and being conscious of one’s soul.
If you are poor, distinguish yourself by your virtues; if rich, by your good deeds.
All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.
Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.
Education should be gentle and stern, not cold and lax.
Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.
Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good. One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them.
Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning.
Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.
Success serves men as a pedestal. It makes them seem greater when not measured by reflection.
Work like you don’t need the money.
You arrive at truth through poetry; I arrive at poetry through truth.
God has commanded Time to console the unhappy.
Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.
Fate and necessity are unconquerable.
One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty.
Men have torn up the roads which led to Heaven, and which all the world followed; now we have to make our own ladders.
There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work.
Let your cry be for free souls rather than for freedom. Moral liberty is the only important liberty.
He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.