He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.

Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.

As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time with me, poets more excellent lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my country I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colors-of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here have a consciousness of superiority to many.