"Garde-toi des pensées vagabondes ! / Elève-toi au-dessus de ce marécage de souffrance / Comme l’éléphant s’extrait de la boue."

"Grâce à sa modération et sa maîtrise de lui­-même / Le sage crée une île / Qu’aucun raz­-de-­marée ne saurait submerger."

"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."

"My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom."

"The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own."

"Evenings on the way home he gets angry at some change, arrives in a rage and promises himself: I will stay at home; work, nothing but work"

"Your sensitive, responsive soul is seeking to escape from the maze of... Yes, the struggle is terrific, titanic. But do not lose heart !"

"Let me say to you now that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual."

"Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old."

"One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that ?"

"Multitude, solitude: identical terms, and interchangeable by the active and fertile poet."

[Extracts] "The value of solitude — one of its values — is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within..."

"It is my turn thank you for the "Harz Journey in Winter". Not the Brahms version .. but for the Goethe poem, which is pure splendor." Rilke

[Quotes] "People are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things."

"I love the stillness of the wood / I love the music of the rill / I love to couch in pensive mood / Upon some silent hill."

"Of three metamorphoses of the spirit do I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child."

"One cold winter's day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order to prevent themselves from being frozen..."

"And you dear friend, what are you doing at this hour ? Grubbing also, alone also... ?"

"The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth."

"Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world, sunk in a deep grave; waste and lonely is its place."

"Passer-by. — Almanacs for the New Year ? / Alm. Seller. — Yes, Sir. / Passer-by. — Do you think this New Year will be a happy one ?"

"At last, becoming a complete misanthrope, he used to live spending his time in walking about the mountains; feeding on grasses and plants."