The true return to nature is the definitive return to the elements-death.

Mozart's joy is made of serenity, and a phrase of his music is like a calm thought; his simplicity is merely purity. It is a crystalline thing in which all the emotions play a role, but as if already celestially transposed. Moderation consists in feeling emotions as the angels do.

Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortunes

The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring.

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.