The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

Nothing is harder than to get people to think about what they are going to do.

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.

An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please.

There's no such thing as a grown up person.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

In a world in which everything is subject to the passing of time, art alone is both subject to time and yet victorious over it.