If only – so he thought to himself later – Gerda’s face had been a little less flawless in its beauty, the beauty of her body would have remained as maddening to his senses as it was at the beginning. But the more he had seen of her the more beautiful her face had grown; until it had now reached that magical level of loveliness which absorbs with a kind of absoluteness the whole aesthetic sense, paralysing the erotic sensibility.

The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature’s ways.

It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature. And yet the earth is actually and literally the mother of us all. One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.

Nothing is against nature!” he retorted. “That’s the mistake people make; and it causes endless unhappiness.

The more money you give to people the better; and the less advice.

Words cannot be remote from reality when they create reality.

The influence of friendship upon culture differs from that of love, in that it assumes the basic idiosyncrasies of personal taste to be unalterable. Love, in spite of all rational knowledge to the contrary, is always in the mood of believing in miracles.

Who has not watched a mother stroke her child’s cheek or kiss her child in a certain way and felt a nervous shudder at the possessive outrage done to a free solitary human soul?

Having once aroused in our mind enough faith in our own will-power to create a universe of contemplation and forget everything else, there are few limitations to the happiness we may enjoy.

Every day that we allow ourselves to take things for granted, every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life.