A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.

The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the ''productive'' man a yet higher species.

Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.

Energy wasted on negative ends.

Every word has its fragrance: there is a harmony and a disharmony of fragrances, and hence of words.

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.