Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.

If only we could lean over the soul we love and see as in a mirror the image we cast!

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

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.