My first experiences of academic friendship made me smile in after years when I looked back on them. But my circle of acquaintances had gradually grown so large that it was only natural new friendships should grow out of it.

That a literature in our time is living is shown in that way that it debates problems.

School is a foretaste of life.

My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.

It was jolly in the country. A cow and little pigs to play with and milk warm from the cow.

But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.

A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.