Experience is valuable only when it has brought suffering and when the suffering has left its mark upon both body and mind.

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.

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

The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book.

I knew a man who had been virtually drowned and then revived. He said that his death had not been painful.

Art is an effort to create, beside the real world, a more humane world.

The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.