“Man has not a greater enemy than himself.”

I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.

For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.

I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.

And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt, Left here without the light I loved so much, In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.

When the poet died his cat was put to death and mummified.

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another’s woe.

Hitherto your eyes have been darkened and you have looked too much, yes, far too much, upon the things of earth. If these so much delight you what shall be your rapture when you lift your gaze to things eternal!

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.

Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone Whereunder lies my darling, lies my dear, And cry to her to speak from heaven’s sphere.

A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.

For style beyond the genius never dares.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.

To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.

Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.