Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.

A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowing it, and our supposedly lying words foreshadow an imminent reality.

There is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a way is always present, it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again.

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.