Love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.

When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile.

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

When you want to build a ship, then do not drum the men together in order to procure wood, to give instructions or to distribute the work, but teach them longing for the wide endless sea.

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.

"What place would you advise me to visit now?" he asked. "The planet Earth," replied the geographer. "It has a good reputation."