“The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.”

There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.

People should be beautiful in every way – in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts, and in their innermost selves.

People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.

Even while lying, you’ll be believed if you speak with authority.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

Man is what he believes.

If there’s any illness for which people offer many remedies, you may be sure that particular illness is incurable, I think.

A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.

In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.

The teacher must be an actor, an artist,passionately in love with his work.

All saints have past and all sinners have a future.

If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.

Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.

There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.

You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist.

My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom–freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves.

If your love destroys me, consider my destruction glorious.

The war between my mind and my heart has been the biggest destruction of my peace.

Find me someone who has gone to the darkest parts of their own character where they were so close to their own self-destruction and found a way to get up and out of it, and I will bow on my knees to you. You’re my teacher.

Without a vision people and the church become self-centered. People start finding fault with one another and the church self-destructs.

When work goes out of style we may expect to see civilization totter and fall.

The rate of profit is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.