To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.

Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.

Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.