If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill.

I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.

Few people are capable of concerning themselves with the most recent past. Either the present holds us violently captive, or we lose ourselves in the distant past and strive with might and main to recall and restore what is irrevocably lost.

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.

Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.

Without haste, but without rest.

There is no art in turning a goddess into a witch, a virgin into a whore, but the opposite operation, to give dignity to what has been scorned, to make the degraded disireable, that calls for art or for character.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.

We must note the curious fact that people are not content with what is simple to understand, but go straight for the more complex problems which they will perhaps never grasp. What is simple to grasp is quite usable and useful, and can keep us occupied for a whole lifetime if it satisfies and stimulates us.

An unused life is an early death.