If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.
Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.
Everything is music for the born musician.
Take possession of the air, submit the elements, penetrate the last redoubts of nature, make space retreat, make death retreat.
One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.
Every man, every art, has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with little and many lies.
Passion is like genius: a miracle.
No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.
Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.
To understand everything is to hate nothing.
You desire a popular art? Begin by having a “people” whose minds are liberated, a people not crushed by misery and ceaseless toil, not brutalized by every superstition and every fanaticism, a people of itself, and victor in the fight that is being waged today.
The greatest human ideal is the great cause of bringing together the thoughts of Europe and Asia; the great soul of India will topple our world.
There are some dead who are more alive than the living.
I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.
Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous.
You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things.
Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another.
If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.
All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities.
The friend who understands you, creates you.