Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything th...at exists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by ...writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of depar...ture which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothi...ng lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to re...ad the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate b...etween God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, griefs, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations--all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mutual repect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose l...ife we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »