A mind might ponder its thought for an epoch, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach in a day.

No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc.

Every word was once a poem.

It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.

The leaves are falling, falling as from way off, as though far gardens withered in the skies; they are falling with denying gestures. And in the nights the heavy earth is falling from all the stars down into loneliness. We all are falling. This hand falls. And look at others: it is in them all. And yet there is one who holds this falling endlessly gently in his hands.

To a physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ.

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.