“There is no need to run outside for better seeing... Rather abide at the center of your being; For the more you leave it the less you learn. Search your heart and see... The way to do is to be.”

“The wise are not learned, the learned are not wise.”

“Your name or your body, what is dearer? Your body or your wealth, what is worthier?”

“In the Golden Age, Rulers were unknown. In the following age Rulers were loved and praised. Next came the age When rulers were feared. Finally the age When rulers are hated.”

“One who believes in himself has no need to convince others.”

“All your restlessness is out of your desire for stillness Just desire restlessly, then, love will fill and still you. All your unhealthiness is out of your desire for health, Just abandon health, then, even poison will heal you.”

“In order to understand the dance one must be still. And in order to truly understand stillness one must dance.”

“Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.”

“Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.”

“Then others for breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.”

“Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.”

“Such as we are made of, such we be.”

“Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”

“An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms, but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact.”

“I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

“The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.”

“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”

“I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.”

“Retire me to my Milan, whereEvery third thought shall be my grave.”

“I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.”