Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

... why do people who live in the country always give themselves such airs?

Thinking is my fighting.

The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life.

I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.

madam," the man cried, leaping to the ground, "you're hurt!" "I'm dead, sir!" she replied. A few minutes later, they became engaged.

For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.