“An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.”

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate.

It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.