"Stone on the path, you are stronger than me ! Tree in the meadow, you will outlast me, and perhaps so will you, little raspberry bush..."

"I offer this book to you not as a lorgnette to observe others but as a mirror to observe yourself."

"If I could, I would choose every day another form, plant or animal, I would be all flowers one by one: weed, thistle, or rose..."

"One wishes for laziness in wicked men and silence in fools."

"— I realized this morning the prodigious effect of climate on one’s state of mind ..."

"Prometheus is action. Hamlet is hesitation. In Prometheus the obstacle is exterior; in Hamlet it is interior."

"Oh, dear friend, what a small amount of joy is mine and what a lot of my own smoke I have to consume !"

"When we are not alone when we are on our own, then we have achieved solitude."

"When we are depressed we may say we are dispirited; we have lost the energy for the journey..."

“Success, peace, happiness, and distraction — pale before the question of whether or not one experiences this life as meaningful.”

"Reading can easily be nothing more than a way to kill time; but if it is calculated and intense, it is a steady extension of one's life."

"Anxiety is inescapable, anxiety is a part of all our lives. Anxiety is the source of all creativity."

"I've got nature and art and poetry, and if that isn't enough, what is ?" Vincent van Gogh

"May the Dragon of Envy be far from us, and the Swan of Imprudence, the Cassiopeia of Vanity, the Andromeda of Laziness..."

"What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one."

"What's the matter ? You don't look like yourself !" "It's because I am so delighted, Mamma ! Do you know, now all Russia knows of me !"

"What is thought ? where does it dwell ? how is it formed ?"

"The white cat was a healer and a nurse. She destroyed poison, counteracted irritation and strengthened people's powers of recuperation."

"The same processes the alchemists employed in contemplation of the transmutation of metals can be used to bring union to the self."

"Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach, waiting for a gift from the sea."

"It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me."

"The fleeting and poignant desire to hear no more, to see no more, to remain silent and motionless. Crazy dreams of solitude."

"He was a tone-poet. He seemed to live upon music, the moody food of imagination."