To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.

He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions-such a man is . . . a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being-an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner-life is a slave of his surroundings as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air.

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.

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.