Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.

It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds and that is faithful to what it finds.

What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not.

Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would by no means suffer?

The entire most beautiful order of things that are very good, when their measures have been accomplished, is to pass away.

We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.