A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

The coward does not know what it means to be alone: an enemy is always standing behind his chair.

Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.

Nothing seems to me to be rarer today then genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that this plant finds the mild atmosphere of our culture unendurable. Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief one already has.

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.

Among the wealthy, generosity is often merely a kind of shyness.