That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups.

It is the missed opportunity that counts, and in a love that vainly yearns from behind prison bars you have perchance the love supreme.

Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.

The soldier's body becomes a stock of accessories that are not his property.

You become responsible for a long time for what you've tamed.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.