The melancholia of everything completed!

One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it -those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.

To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.

When the gratitude that many owe to one discards all modesty, then there is fame.

How do you expect to learn to dance when you have not even learned to walk! And above the dancer is still the flyer and his bliss.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

A friend whose hopes we cannot satisfy is a friend we would rather have as an enemy.