The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life.

The writer must be able to revel and roll in the abundance of words; he must know not only the direct but also the secret power of a word. There are overtones and undertones to a word, and lateral echoes, too.

Great men are excellent topics of conversation, but the superior man, the superior men, the masters, the universal spirits on horseback, have to stop and search their memories merely to know who these so-called great men might be. And so the great man is left with the crowd, the worthless majority...for his admirers.

I stood in the lee of an overhanging rock and thought of many things.

Heaven knows that there are plenty of opportunities in later life, too, for being carried away. What of it? We remain what we are and, no doubt, it is all very good for us!

You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content.

What will I do when I can no longer dig?