“I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.”

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

You may live a long while with some people and be on friendly terms with them and never speak openly with them from your soul.

Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.

Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he’s something innately superior, something eternal–and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.

Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.

There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.

So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me – a long, long road without a goal.

I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.

I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.

Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you?

Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this – Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four.

What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.

Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.

Which would have been a very interesting thing to have done, but we were very aware that we wanted a bizarre kind of production value on the record.

No one will argue that writing is an easy profession. Getting someone to pay you for your words isn’t easy. But there are strategies you can use to simplify the process and transform what you can produce.

The production pushes and pulls you as much as the song does. It’s almost more to do with the production value of how each bit was done as opposed to the actual track itself.

Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour.

Stupid man produces noise; clever man produces silence!

The production of children, the nurture of those born, and the daily life of men, of these matters woman is visibly the cause.

Since a true knowledge of nature gives us pleasure, a lively imitation of it, either in poetry or painting, must produce a much greater; for both these arts are not only true imitations of nature, but of the best nature.

That one plant should be sown and another be produced cannot happen; whatever seed is sown, a plant of that kind even comes forth.