He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

The best path through life is the highway.

Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.

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.

It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.

Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.