“Love alone is the only reasonable activity or pursuit of humankind.”

Rest, nature, books, music – such is my idea of happiness.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.

Love those you hate you.

Don’t seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

It’s all God’s will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.

In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer.

My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people.

The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

This drink has a magical power. It strengthens the weak, and revives those who have fainted. Those tired after work and physical activity can return their life forces by this drink much sooner than by nourishment. It works as a diuretic, an appetizer, an antitoxin.

Few are more unhappy than those who have great ambition, but little energy to urge it into activity.

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Let not a single day pass without your learning a verse, half a verse, or a fourth of it, or even one letter of it; nor without attending to charity, study and other pious activity.

What contributed to my writing early on is how my mom encouraged it. She kept the TV off because she wanted my siblings and I to be engaged and active. So we made forts, put on plays, musicals, and I wrote like crazy.

War is the supreme test of man in which he rises to heights never approached in any other activity.

Prune – prune businesses, products, activities, people. Do it annually.