He Who Has Calmly Reconciled His Life

For In All Adversity Of Fortune The Worst Sort Of Misery Is To Have Been Happy.

If There Is Anything Good About Nobility It Is That It Enforces The Necessity Of Avoiding Degeneracy.

So It Follows That Those Who Have Reason Have Freedom To Will Or Not To Will, Although This Freedom Is Not Equal In All Of Them. [...] Human Souls Are More Free When They Persevere In The Contemplation Of The Mind Of God, Less Free When They Descend To The Corporeal, And Even Less Free When They Are Entirely Imprisoned In Earthly Flesh And Blood.

I Who Once Wrote Songs With Keen Delight Am Now By Sorrow Driven To Take Up Melancholy Measures. Wounded Muses Tell Me What I Must Write, And Elegiac Verses Bathe My Face With Real Tears. Not Even Terror Could Drive From Me These Faithful Companions Of My Long Journey. Poetry, Which Was Once The Glory Of My Happy And Flourishing Youth, Is Still My Comfort In This Misery Of My Old Age.

The Science Of Numbers Ought To Be Preferred As An Acquisition Before All Others, Because Of Its Necessity And Because Of The Great Secrets And Other Mysteries Which There Are In The Properties Of Numbers. All Sciences Partake Of It, And It Has Need Of None.