Time does not relinquish its rights, either over human beings or over mountains.

The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses.

Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.

One does not get to know that one exists until one rediscovers oneself in others.

Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.

In society every man is taken for what he gives himself out to be; but he must give himself out to be something. Better to be slightly disagreeable than altogether insignificant.

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.