What tender and devoted mother wouldn't be dismayed and ill with terror at her son's or daughter's stepping even one hair's breath off the beaten track. No, better let him be happy and live in comfort without originality, is what every mother thinks when she rocks the cradle. The only person among us who can fail to reach the general's rank is the original man - in other words, the man who won't be quiet.

You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.

Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive?

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone else. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill--he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.