You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image, - mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain, - you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day's work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing, - nothing left in you.

I remember my youth... the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men.

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all.

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy