It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.

Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.

Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.

I want to suffer so that I may love.

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.