Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.