“Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.”

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.

Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.

Technology and comfort – having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a ‘happy’ one?

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!

He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.

I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me…I don’t know which makes me feel worse.

Speech is civilization itself.

What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature!

Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.

People’s behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.