Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public.
To an old man any place that’s warm is homeland.
When one loves somebody, everything is clear – where to go, what to do – it all takes care of itself and one doesn’t have to ask anybody about anything.
One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn’t marry a girl of twenty.
We ever long for visions of beauty, We ever dream of unknown worlds.
There is no one on earth more disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms. Even as there is no one so miserable as he who accepts them.
It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes.
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.
Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say – to them silence is simple and easy.
Our salvation is in work, but let us also take delight in that work.
A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.
You will not drown the truth in seas of blood.
Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That’s why we want to be considerate of every man – Who knows what’s in him, why he was born and what he can do?
Even a bad man is better than a good book.
An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form.
Everywhere, within man and without, there is devastation, instability, chaos, and evidence of some prolonged rout.
There’s a little book I’m thinking of writing – “Swan Song” is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.
Anger is like ice, and also quick to melt.
The Englishman walks before the law like a trained horse in the circus. He has the sense of legality in his bones, in his muscles.
In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible – such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?