A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

What pleases the public is lively and vivid delineation which makes no demands on the intellect; but passionate and absolutist youth can only be enthralled by a problem.

For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.

Speech is civilization itself.

It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.