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.

But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand.

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.

There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.

Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for revealing the truth. It is life that, little by little, example by example, permits us to see that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but through other agencies. Then it is that the intellect, observing their superiority, abdicates its control to them upon reasoned grounds and agrees to become their collaborator and lackey.

All the mind's activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality.