We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

For souls in growth, great quarrels are great emancipations.

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.

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.

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

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.

What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.