Once we have found ourselves, we must understand how from time to time to lose--and then to find--ourselves once again: assuming,that is, that we are thinkers. For a thinker it is a drawback to be bound to a single person all the time.

There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the consequence for the cause.

The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.

And so while dreams are the individual man's play with reality, the sculptor's art is (in a broader sense) the play with dreams.

Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.

When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men and things in this manner with Yes and No. Everything is arranged so that the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional, should be cruelly fooled and abused until a man learns to put a little art into his feelings and rather to risk trying even what is artificial — as the real artists of life do.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.