---

Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.

---

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

---

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire . . .

---

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

---

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.

---

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

---

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

---

But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living; which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God.

---

...as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings...

---

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a general natural law

---