A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

Writing is busy idleness.

Only the soul that loves is happy

There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.

The man of understanding finds everything laughable.

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.