“How many are quite unworthy to see the light, and yet the day dawns.”

“It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have.”

“Life, if you know how to use it, is long; but…many, following no fixed aim, shifting and… dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course.”

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”

“What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?”

“When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”

“It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and -what will perhaps make you wonder more - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.”