“Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.”

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything.

There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.

The ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.

More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.

Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.

There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.

There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course.