I want to love the things as no one has thought to love them.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude

Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good.

I think of you often, dear, and with such concentrated wishes that it really must help you in some way.

And yet, for some time now I have believed that it is our own force, all our own force that is still too great for us. It is true we do not know it; but is it not just that which is most our own of which we know the least?

[A]t bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed.