“In these moments of tête-à-tête with the infinite, how different life looks! How all that usually occupies and excites us becomes suddenly puerile, frivolous, and vain. We seem to ourselves mere puppets, marionettes, strutting seriously through a fantastic show, and mistaking gewgaws for things of great price.”

“When we are doing nothing in particula, it is then that we are living through all our being.”

“A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.”

“Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.”

“It is by teaching that we teach ourselves.”

“At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction; he has a secret horror of all which makes him feel his own littleness; the eternal, the infinite, perfection, therefore scare and terrify him. He wishes to approve himself, to admire and congratulate himself; and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.”

“Life is short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.”