The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.

You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.