Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated. - Miguel de Unamuno

"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to achieve nothing"… so Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can embrace everything , or almost everything; with the will nothing, or almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness — no! not if this contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our knowledge and our power pity arises.

Absolute relativism, which is neither more nor less than skepticism, in the most modern sense of the term, is the supreme triumph of the reasoning reason.

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.