Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.

The only test of work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.

One of the marks of a great poet is that he creates his own family of words and teaches them to live together in harmony and to help one another.

We soon cease to feel the grief at the deaths of our friends, yet we continue to the end of our lives to miss them. They are still with us in their absence.