Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false.

I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.

Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead. And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.

Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenuous. It is not knowledge, not content of feeling... it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart.

We wasters of sorrows! How we stare away into sad endurance beyond them, trying to foresee their end! Whereas they are nothing else than our winter foliage, our sombre evergreen, one of the seasons of our interior year.