One has so much time for thought in the country! However occupied one may be, 'tis with nothing that engrosses the mind, which works away on its own account like a mill-wheel.

How long time is when one is sad! Is it three years or three days since you went away?

One fancies that what one loves cannot die.

My God, how badly one calculates in this world! ... Let us leave off calculating on anything but death -- it is the only certainty.

Solitude causes us to write because it causes us to think.

We are only here below as in an inn on a journey. Let us, then have the feelings of travelers. We should think a man very strange who attached himself much to his inn. The wise Christian will not do this.

Fear is the beginning of wisdom.