"We were still two days on the steamer getting to Bremen and then we changed trains and boats about fifteen times in 24 hours getting here. But once here it is beyond all words in delight. The place is perfectly beautiful. I cannot describe it to you. It is so quiet, so far away from everything. Beautiful forests that we drive through, deer all over, swans, fountains and all so old. I lead a most regular of lives. Everyone is exact to the minute, for meals and everything. I feel that it is a very great opportunity I am having to be here in Denmark and see all this new country. It is so interesting and I enjoy it so much. It was very sweet of Louisette to ask me."
Glorupvej, Denmark 1900.
"What you write in answer to my saying that I like 'whole soulness': it is precisely the whole soulness which is not a conscious conquest that I like. I appreciate the merit of the last but it is not that which attracts me, which also reminds me that I want to tell you that I have come to the firm, clear and definite conclusion that a person that loves is not necessarily loving, nor a person that gives necessarily generous. A loving person may never love and a generous person may never give, and the practice of either quality does not indicate an impulse. One can conceive, accept and appropriate the idea of generosity, lovingness, etc., etc., and act it, but that is not the thing. I hate all effort which has for its aim the creation of self, the conscious creation. I like the self to become through slavery to the best natural impulses and through sacrifice brought in one's affections. Seeing that we do depend on each other, it seems to me admissible that the surrender of self, which continues to be with me the highest of everything, should allow of a direct object as its means. I used to have a holy respect of the majority. Now, when I see how many imbeciles go to make up that majority I am no longer afraid to throw over any precept that has filtered into my head, and if ever there was a revolutionist in thought, it is I. Foolish beliefs and hobbies have become adorned with so much that appeals to the sense of the beautiful that one clings even to that, but then that is another element which can envelop rational things as well. Of course all cannot help but be well, but then I am sure that the present condition is quite off the track and I have no respect for anything but pain, joy and sacrifice which are the only realities. Life makes standards and standards don't make life."
Glorupvej 1900.
"I can tolerate wrong and weakness and everything else but that search for self and above all that pompous blowing of a horn before such empty things, such big sounding ambitions, that mock glory, that swelling in noble pride upon such fictitious hallucinations, that poor mesquin grandness. It is exasperating. I hate ambition to achieve. However, I suppose I am very foolish. I am a mass of vanity and self-seeking in my own way, but it is a great pleasure to cry down. I get roused sometimes on things that are not my business and I have felt very much inclined to express my opinion about some thing, but I suppose I had better not."
"My life I think is molded on circumstance and on the best of my instinct and judgment which may be faulty but which in every special instance seems the safest to me. To remind oneself constantly that one's life is made up of days prevents one from taking most things 'au tragique' and makes existence passable enough."
Paris 1900.
"Life is so short. The only peace is in remembering how short life is. I work so hard at my painting. My efforts alone deserve some results, but it is slow in forthcoming. This week however there is an improvement. I get up before seven every day and go to bed at nine and drink eight glasses of milk a day. I hope you are pleased. Some emotion, more extremeness, some craziness, some feeling, really I think it is necessary. I do not see any satisfaction in anything but intense feeling. Intense feeling which may come even in the quietest of lives and which does not depend upon external events. It is astonishing how easy it is to be tolerant of people's personalities, however unsympathetic to one, and how very easy also to be intolerant of their point of view."
"There is nothing so disastrous as to be fooled by the appreciation where it is not deserved. How I wish I could do any one thing well."
Paris 1900.