“My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.”

“My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.”

“Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.”

“Only so much of life do I know as I have lived. ”

“So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours.”

“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”

“My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.”