She had done all she could - she had run up to him and given herself up entirely, shyly, blissfully. He put his arms around her and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss.”

“Now one often saw only her face and body, while her soul was not seen at all.”

“There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And Itry licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.

“Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself. —HENRI AMIEL”

"Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling.

“We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand).”

“Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.”

“I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”

“When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and spring grass.”

“The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.”

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”

“Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves.”

“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

“But neither of them dared speak of it, and not having expressed the one thing that occupied their thoughts, whatever they said rang false.”