It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.

One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.

Whatever is the lot of humankind I want to taste within my deepest self. I want to seize the highest and the lowest, to load its woe and bliss upon my breast, and thus expand my single self titanically and in the end go down with all the rest.

Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.