Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.

A tree is beautiful, but what's more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples' character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.

A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher. But a daughter is a different matter.

When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.