Whatever anyone does or says, I must be a good man. It is as if an emerald, or gold or purple, were always saying: 'Whatever anyone does or says, I must be an emerald and keep my own colour.

It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.

Nature in no case cometh short of art, for the arts are copiers of natural forms.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too - ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring earth.