They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

The Hour-Hand of Life --- Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea - all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life.

A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

When we talk in company we lose our unique tone of voice, and this leads us to make statements which in no way correspond to our real thoughts.