It is far more important that one's life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers?

We can never judge a soul above the high water mark of our own.

How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words.

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.

At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along.

Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving.