“Our own age has always repelled me, so that, but for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.”

Original: Nostra aetas me semper offendit, adeo ut, nisi me carorum amor retinuisset, qualibet alia nasci maluerim quam hac. — The classic humanist preference for antiquity over the present. · Letter to Posterity (Posteritati) (Latin)

• Exile
• Past
• Time

“What good is it to teach others if you do not first listen to yourself?”

Original: A che ti giova insegnare agli altri, se intanto tu per primo non ascolti te stesso? — A rebuke of the admired Cicero that turns moral authority inward. · Letter to Cicero, Familiares XXIV, 3 (commonly given in Italian from the Latin original)

• Advice
• Authors
• Self Knowledge

“I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things, when even the pagan philosophers had long taught that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself.”

Original: Clausi librum iratus mihi quod terrestria adhuc mirarer, qui vel a philosophis ethnicis didicissem pridem nihil praeter animum esse mirabile, cui magno nihil magnum est extra se. — After opening Augustine on the summit, he turns from landscape to conscience. · Letter on the ascent of Mont Ventoux, Familiares IV, 1 (Latin)

• Reflection
• Soul
• Wonder