If we neglect our privileges, the gods take them from us.

Time is not so all-erasing as we think.

Theories are like scaffolding: they are not the house, but you cannot build the house without them.

It is easy to be humble when a greater is preferred but when an inferior is lifted high above our heads, how can we bear it?

warm-heartedness generally begins at home, and those who are warm to others are warmer to themselves it is but the overflow.

Are we to go out with trumpets and tell everything we know, just because it is true? Is there not such a thing as egotistical truthfulness?

a daughter's love for a kind father ... is mixed with the careless happiness of childhood, which can never come again. Into the father's grave the daughter, sometimes a gray-haired woman, lays away forever the little pet names and memories which to all the rest of the world are but foolishness.