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.

One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom.

As Coleridge said, "We receive but what we give." The happy life is a life of continual generosity in which we go out to meet and acclaim the world.

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

Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the Gypsies.

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

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.