“The sole precoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity for philanthropic reasons and the perfection of weapons as instruments of civilization.”

Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another.

Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.

He must have travelled everywhere, at least in the spirit.

It must be, for there is a logic to everything on this earth and nothing is done without a reason, that God sometimes lets scientists discover.

It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

So is man’s heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.

What darkness is to you is light is to me.

The Great Architect of the universe built it of good firm stuff.

The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.

As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.

I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word ‘love’ frightens me.

The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the ‘Living Infinite.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.

How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!

In presence of Nature’s grand convulsions man is powerless.

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally… Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.

Civilization is always in danger when those who have never learned to obey are given the right to command.

Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilization that you wish to uphold.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.