“Everything disturbs an absent lover.”

Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.

Seek for good, but expect evil.

Make yourself honey and the flies will devour you.

The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce.

I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.

Where envy reigns virtue can’t exist, and generosity doesn’t go with meanness.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.

Think before thou speakest.

Cunning cheats itself wholly, and other people partially.

Be brief, for no talk can please when too long. Being prepared is half the victory.

Other men’s pains are easily borne.

Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.

Beware, gentle knight – the greatest monster of them all is reason.

Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy.

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

The purity of man is the absence of something, the purity of Jesus is the presence of something.

Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is “timing” it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.

What we call evil is the absence of Light, of love, in all cases.

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

Total absence of humor makes life a total drudgery.

In order to thoroughly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times.

Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.

Happiness is not the absence of problems; it’s the ability to deal with them.