“Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it.”

Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.

I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies.

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.

You are eternity’s hostage A captive of mine.

You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

I have the impression that if he didn’t complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.

As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

What strikes me about Jesus is that he is a remarkably true person; he never changes his personality to fit in with whatever crowd he finds himself. He is simply himself, and he never plays to his audience.

They, I think, despised her remarks about the flawed 2011 elections in Russia. They feared that she would be very tough on Russia in terms of sanctions.

Man must spend much more time in extraordinary natural places to grasp much better how remarkable our planet is and to realise what a great privilege and what an enormous joy to be living here!

There’s a sort of decency among the dead, a remarkable discretion: you never find them making any complaint against the doctor who killed them!

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not.

For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.