“If we train our conscience, it kisses us while it hurts”

“The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.”

“When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.”

“The bite of conscience is indecent.”

“The great epochs of life come when we gain the courage to re-christen our evil as what is best in us”

“The slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we carry along with us almost unnoticed, and meet up with again in dreams; finally, after it has for a long time lain modestly in our heart, it takes complete possession of us, filling our eyes with tears, our hearts with longing. What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error.”

“The great periods of our life occur when we gain the courage to rechristen what is bad about us as what is best.”