Water is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing; it sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.

One of the privileges of the great is to witness catastrophes from a terrace.

Who would prefer peace to the glory of hunger and thirst, of wading through mud, and dying in the service of one's country?

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

Each day the worst of our faults, our deficiencies, our crimes, the truth of our lives, is stifled under a triple layer of forgetfulness, death and the ordinary course of justice.

A man has only one way of being immortal on earth: he has to forget he is a mortal.

Death holds no horrors. It is simply the ultimate horror of life.