"A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance."

"One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up."

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

"I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin."

"Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being."

"Nature teaches us a valuable lesson: the melody of life is composed of both highs and lows."

"In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires."

"It is a steadfast truth that let thoughts come and go like clouds across an undisturbed autumn sky — an essential principle for the reflective life."