A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.

That is at bottom the only courage demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

Most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.

At bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism.

In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.