An old man, having retired from active life, regains the gaity and irresponsibility of childhood. He is ready to play, he cannot run with his son, but he can totter with his grandson. Our first and last steps have the same rhythm.

Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.

The minds of different generations are as impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz.

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

Housekeeping in common is for women the acid test.

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.

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