A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.

Live as if you were eternal.

The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.

A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world.

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.

It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently...

If you create a character, you create a destiny.