Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.

It is dreadful how I miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid.

a letter, by its arrival, defrauds us of a whole secret region of our existence, the only region indeed in which the true pleasure of life may be tasted, the region of imagination, creative and protean, the clouds and beautiful shapes of whose heaven are destroyed by the wind of reality.

A good start in life is as important to plants as it is to children: they must develop strong roots in a congenial soil, otherwise they will never make the growth that will serve them richly according to their needs in their adult life.

[On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts.

I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.