“There was time for work, for play, for love, the confidence that if a task was not done at the appointed time, I easily could fit it into another hour. I used to take leisure for granted, as I did time itself.”

Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.

German is of stone, limestone, pudding stone, marble, granite even, and so to a considerable degree is English, whereas French is bronze and gives out a metallic resonance with tones that neither German nor English tolerate.

Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.

We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: “Too bad we can’t get together more often”.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.

A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die.

International affairs will be placed on a better footing when it is understood that there is no way of punishing a people for the crimes of its rulers.

No artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art…our world would have remained a jungle.

Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.

Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.

As I got warmed up, and felt perfectly at home in talk, I heard myself boasting, lying, exaggerating. Oh, not deliberately, far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk, and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.

When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.

I never felt that there was anything enviable in youth. I cannot recall that any of us, as youths, admired our condition to excess or had a desire to prolong it.

I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.

Let a Secretary of Peace be appointed.

Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a selfappointed elite of supermen.

Self appointed expectations lead to self induced frustrations.

And it’s about time that officials take their responsibility and are responsible in front of the people. Because today, if you’re appointed by the king, they don’t feel that they’re responsible for the people.