Love is like swallowing hot chocolate before it has cooled off. It takes you by surprise at first, but keeps you warm for a long time.

In order to see Christianity, one must forget all the Christians.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.

The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.

Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.

A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.

I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.