“Very often, gleams of light come in a few minutes' sleeplessness, in a secondperhaps; you must fix them. To entrust them to the relaxed brain is like writing on water; there is every chance that on the morrow there will be no slightest trace left of any happening.”

“Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle.”

“Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them. Every one must be challenged. A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us”

“Children are very nice observers, and they will often perceive our slightest defects. It general those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.”

“Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.”

“Most people are like a falling leaf as it twists and turns its way through the air, lurches and tumbles to the ground. Others, though – a very few – are like stars set on a fixed course; no wind can reach them, and they carry their law and their path within them.”