[Written in 1901:] Nothing has been so deplorable for countries as centralization. I am afraid when I see Germany grow so powerful, and centralizing in Berlin; it is the beginning of the end!

Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph; with time it fades.

Never can a room look comfortable without books ... Books ought to be scattered all over the house, even in the passages, in the bedroom, les livres du chevet, everywhere.

My greatest wish is to write in such a manner that all may think they have written it themselves.

You can never make someone punctual who is not, or quick who is slow, or lively who wants to plod on carefully. I have learnt that every fault is an exaggerated quality, nothing else.

Those who look for reasons to hate miss opportunities to love.

I am quite above physical death and believe it to be only the birth throes for a much purer life in a much purer draping.

One doesn't know one's self what grain one sows, that works on and on, through one and through many lives, transmitted from heart to heart and from lips to lips.

Every day is an opportunity to realise the wonder that exists in the world.

For every purpose there is a plan

When Jesus needed friends, they left Him.

Travel is fatal to narrowmindedness, prejudice and bigotry.

Knowing to do the right thing, but playing stupid to oblige to it, is still lying.

[On Bonnie Prince Charlie:] Oh, Charlie is my darling, / My darling, my darling; / Oh, Charlie is my darling, / The young Chevalier.

The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State.

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes American what it is.

A caged canary is safe but not free.

Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.