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

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”.

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.

The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.

Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.

The greatest help you will ever have in this life is the Holy Ghost! Cultivate him as a friend and constant companion.

If we don’t help each other, who will?

We cannot, of course, save the World because we do not have authority over its parts. We can serve the world though. That is everyone’s calling, to lead a life that helps.

To excel is to reach your own highest dream. But you must also help others, where and when you can, to reach theirs. Personal gain is empty if you do not feel you have positively touched another’s life.

There can be no greater act of kindness than to help others when your own world has been destroyed.

We’re evolving as a culture as well and as more equality gets supplanted in society, well, in the U.S. anyway, it’s only helping women. We do have much more work to do though, in spreading awareness about where we fall short in our culture and in other cultures.

In American Society today, we need to have volunteerism. I truly believe that it is the glue that will hold us together and it will be the energy that will take us into the 21st century.