“It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.”

“He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions – such a man is a mere article of the worlds furniture – a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being – an echo, not a voice.”

“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.”

“What is it which has always come between real life and me? What glass screen has, as it were, interposed itself between me and the enjoyment, the possession, the contact of things, leaving me only the role of the looker-on?”

“Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.”

“The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.”

“Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.”