Sublime

Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.

active scepticism;

Combien de fois n'ai-je pas à endormir mon sang qui bouillonne ! car tu n'as rien vu de si inégal, de si inquiet que mon cœur. Ai-je besoin de te le dire, à toi qui as souffert si souvent de me voir passer de la tristesse à une joie extravagante, de la douce mélancolie à une passion furieuse ? Aussi je traite mon cœur comme un petit enfant malade.

"Piety," he says, "is not an end but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul."

Forethought is simple, afterthought manifold.

The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

As Goethe once observed, the great failing is “to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.”

J'ai tant ! et son idée dévore tout ; j'ai tant ! et sans elle tout pour moi se réduit à rien.