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

Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.

For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Stupid – well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.

We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.

He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented.

Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?

Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.

Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought – these are the artist’s highest joy.

Often I have thought of the day when I gazed for the first time at the sea. The sea is vast, the sea is wide, my eyes roved far and wide and longed to be free. But there was the horizon. Why a horizon, when I wanted the infinite from life?

Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.

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.

The connections we make in the course of a life, maybe that’s what heaven is.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

I’m telling you that India is that way, now set my course.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Sexual intercourse is a slight attack of apoplexy.

A leader, once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets tough.

Reading has changed the course of my life radically. I did not aim behind it to gain any certificates to improve my position. Rather, I wanted to live intellectually.

The actions of a single person can change the course of the world and create history.