It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and the last find it gone. It is the men or women who first tread down the path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly.

One has no right to form ideals of people, and then, because they don't justify them, become bitter.

I am always thirsting for beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music. I wish I could make it. Perhaps there isn't any music on earth like what I picture to myself.

My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others, and comforting those who are sad.

How hard it is to make your thoughts look anything but imbecile fools when you paint them with ink on paper.

The troubles of the young are soon over; they leave no external mark. If you wound the tree in its youth the bark will quickly cover the gash; but when the tree is very old, peeling the bark off, and looking carefully, you will see the scar there still. All that is buried is not dead.

A word may become so defiled by bad use that it will take a century before it can be purifed, and brought into use again.