A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.

All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."

Love resembles a tree: it bends under its own weight, deeply rooted in our being and sometimes turns green in the ruins of a heart.

There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.