“When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it’s alive; then they have the parts and they’ve lost the whole, for the link that’s missing was the living soul.”

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Everybody wants to be somebody, but nobody wants to grow.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.

Night is the other half of life, and the better half.

Behaviour is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.

To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.

The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.

I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be.

Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

The simple truth is, the more we care about others, the more alive and engaged we’re going to feel.

High heels off; I’m feeling alive.

Night, when words fade and things come alive.

When you die, it will not be because you are sick, but because you were alive.

The purest form of joy comes to us in ordinary moments, and those moments can happen any place where gratitude is alive. ⁣

No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.

Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.

Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.