to have to combat one’s instincts—that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one.

A well-constituted human being, a ‘happy one’, must perform certain actions and instinctively shrinks from other actions, he transports the order of which he is the physiological representative into his relations with other human beings and with things. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness…Everything good is instinct—and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still

Macrame is effortless.

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.

I decided years ago that I wasn't interested in being a virtuoso of the piano.