“If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.”

“It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries,to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.”

“Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.”

“If there is confusion in your head and in your heart, what more do you want! A man who no longer loves and no longer errs should have himself buried straight away.”

“The town itself is disagreeable; but then, all around, you find an inexpressible beauty of nature.”

“Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same storyTo-morrow, and the next more dilatory,For indecision brings its own delays,And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days.Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute!What you can do, or think you can, begin it!Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;Begin it, and the work will be completed.”

“It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.”