
“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.”
A Short History of Decay (1949)
“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.”
On Women (1890)
“In real life, my sweet poet,” the duke said as the swordsmen circled, “words can never be undone.”
Part I, Chapter IX (p. 99)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)
Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)
Source: As quoted in Pearls of Wisdom: A Harvest of Quotations From All Ages (1987) by Jerome Agel and Walter D. Glanze, p. 46. From The Importance of Living: "besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone" (p. 162), "the wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials" (p. 10).
Speech at the Prussian Academy of Art in Berlin (22 January 1929); also in Essays of Three Decades (1942)