One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it ; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God.

Few are made for independence, it is the privilege of the strong.

Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are.

This is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets but one task for each of us: to further the production of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the saint within us and outside us, and thereby to work at the consummation of nature.

As regards the celebrated struggle for life, it seems to me for the present to have been rather asserted than proved. It does occur, but as the exception; the general aspect of life is not hunger and distress, but rather wealth, luxury, even absurd prodigality -- where there is a struggle it is a struggle for power.