Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.

Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering — that is a fact.

Beauty would save the world.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.