However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of "indifferent" nature: they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.

All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.

I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.

Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.