To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all.

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.

The mind, too, has its regimen. It needs gymnastics, just like the body does.

Necessity is the spur of genius.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.