The deeper the soul plunges into religious religious devotion, the more it loses all sense of reality, all need, all desire, all love for reality. - André Gide

We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.

In my present insistence on high standards you will see that there is less self-indulgence than resolve and application. I do not let the Christian monopolize the ideal of perfection. I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.

In a world in which everyone cheats, it's the honest man who passes for a charlatan.