One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,- He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.

A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.