I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.

There are stages in bread-making quite similar to the stages of writing. You begin with something shapeless, which sticks to your fingers, a kind of paste. Gradually that paste becomes more and more firm. Then there comes a point when it turns rubbery. Finally, you sense that the yeast has begun to do its work: the dough is alive. Then all you have to do is let it rest. But in the case of a book the work may take ten years.

I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.

The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.

But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts.

[On travel:] Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison?