I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest -- usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation -- and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.

The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything.

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.

What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.