Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable; precisely the balance and wisdom that comes from long perspectives and broad foundations.

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence. Being, then, is the dazzle each of us makes as we thread the dance of those three rhythms in our lives.

I feel so much the continual death of everything and everybody, and have so learned to reconcile myself to it, that the final and official end loses most of its impressiveness.

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.

The Difficult is that which can be done today. The Impossible is that which takes a little longer.

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

Sanity is madness put to good uses.

What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be always in love with spring.

The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder.