“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.”

Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Luck is believing you’re lucky.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!

Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.

I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.

I can’t expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice.

Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.

Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!

Guessing isn’t knowing.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own ego.

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be.

The pain of discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal.

Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible.

Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities.

What is imagination? It is a God-like, a noble faculty. It renders earth tolerable, it teaches us to live, in the tone of the eternal.

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.