dear
and worthy object.

There are many things in the world that are at once good and excellent,
but they do not come into contact.

When men have to do with women, they get spun off like a distaff.

It may well be that a man is at times horribly threshed by misfortunes,
public and private: but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the
rich sheaves, crushes only the straw; and the corn feels nothing of it
and dances merrily on the floor, careless whether its way is to the mill
or the furrow.

In the matter of knowledge, it has happened to me as to one who rises
early and in the dark impatiently awaits the dawn and then the sun, but
is blinded when it appears.

People often say to themselves in life that they should avoid a variety
of occupation, and, more particularly, be the less willing to enter upon
new work the older they grow. But it is easy to talk, easy to give
advice to oneself and others. To grow old is itself to enter upon a new
business; all the circumstances change, and a man must either cease
acting altogether, or willingly and consciously take over the new role.

To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were
possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea
and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for
thousands of years.

Napoleon lived wholly in a great idea, but he was unable to take
conscious hold of it. After utterly disavowing all ideals and denying
them any reality, he zealously strove to realize them. His clear,
incorruptible intellect could not, however, tolerate such a perpetual
conflict within; and there is much value in the thoughts which he was
compelled, as it were, to utter, and which are expressed very peculiarly
and with much charm.

Man is placed as a real being in the midst of a real world, and endowed
with such organs that he can perceive and produce the real and also the
possible.

All healthy men have the conviction of their own existence and of an
existence around them. However, even the brain contains a hollow spot,
that is to say, a place in which no object is mirrored; just as in the
eye itself there is a little spot that does not see. If a man pays
particular attention to this spot and is absorbed in it, he falls into a
state of mental sickness, has presentiments of 'things of another
world,' which are, in reality, no things at all, possessing neither form
nor limit, but alarming him like d