“Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin. And so, instead of embracing them, let us demand the freedom of the elbow to knock the bottles out of their filthy hands.”

Unhappiness doesn’t grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won’t fall off the roof like a loose tile, no; poverty and unhappiness are man’s doing.

When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.

It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality.

A theater without beer is just a museum

When the house of a great one collapses Many little ones are slain.

Terrible is the temptation to be good.

Would it not be simpler If the Government dissolved the people and elected another?

All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.

We often do not know ourselves the grounds On which we act, though plain to others.

People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.

The finest plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to carry them out, for emperor himself can actually be nothing.

There are some with brains and some without. It makes for a better division of labour.

Their peace and their war Are like wind and storm. War grows from their peace.

I’m in good form, taking no interest in things, neglecting clothes, meals, company, and feeling calm and stable as I write.

The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What’s left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.