Never can a room look comfortable without books ... Books ought to be scattered all over the house, even in the passages, in the bedroom, les livres du chevet, everywhere.

Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph; with time it fades.

My greatest wish is to write in such a manner that all may think they have written it themselves.

You can never make someone punctual who is not, or quick who is slow, or lively who wants to plod on carefully. I have learnt that every fault is an exaggerated quality, nothing else.

Those who look for reasons to hate miss opportunities to love.

I am quite above physical death and believe it to be only the birth throes for a much purer life in a much purer draping.

[Written in 1901:] Nothing has been so deplorable for countries as centralization. I am afraid when I see Germany grow so powerful, and centralizing in Berlin; it is the beginning of the end!

One doesn't know one's self what grain one sows, that works on and on, through one and through many lives, transmitted from heart to heart and from lips to lips.

In every relationship, you can always see the ego of the other, but you cannot see your own – and the other one goes on seeing your ego.

I steal a glance when no one is looking. Especially at his neck, when he turns to say something to my mother. That slender neck, with its air of determination, brisk and bold…

Whatever the questions that trouble you just get up and ask, don't let them suffocate you. Because questions not asked will stay questions unanswered.

How you see the world is a reflection of what is within you.

Was it too much to ask that she find someone who wanted the same things in life as she did--a home, someone to lean on when the not-so-perfect times came crashing down?

If you spend five minutes complaining, you have just wasted five minutes.

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

On any given night, catch me on the floor, working up a sweat, that’s what music’s for.

We weren't too stressed out, this morning we just knew that if we had strong, good swims we would be fine, so it was actually a lot of fun.