“We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to...”

“Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.”

“To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.”

“Consciousness is a born hermit.”

“The earth has its music for those who will listen.”

“A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of ones life, or of human life, as it truly has b...”

“For those who are poor in happiness, each time is a first time; happiness never becomes a habit.”

“One should cultivate good habits of memory, for it is capable of making existence a Paradise or an Inferno.”

“Here is a wonderful habit: From time to time stop; move not; speak not; just watch the nature, because this is the best way to realise explicitly the miracles surrounding us!”

“Life at the edge of the world, it was felt, could go on forever.”

“I always wanted to be a farmer. There is a tradition of that in my family.”

“Tradition has made women cowardly.”