The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection -even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano -is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!

Give me a bed and a book and I am happy.

Don't tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.

People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.

You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate

For souls in growth, great quarrels are great emancipations.