What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!

When writing of oneself one should show no mercy. Yet why at the first attempt to discover one's own truth does all inner strength seem to melt away in floods of self-pity and tenderness and rising tears?

God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don't know it.

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.

Hell is not to love anymore.

It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice?