Life would die without poets, and democracy must have its spellbinders.

Of all things I find most unbearable is the injustice of one generation to another.

People don't use their eyes. They never see a bird, they see a sparrow. They never see a tree, they see a birch. They see concepts.

No one can estimate the power of authority among poor and uneducated people in a world whose problems confuse even the wisest.

It was as dark as the inside of a cabinet minister.

A friend of mine tells me that a Beethoven symphony can solve for him a problem of conduct. I've no doubt that it does so simply by giving him a sense of the tragedy and the greatness of human destiny, which makes his personal anxieties seem small, which throws them into a new proportion.

Old men when they begin to hear the last trumpet, on the morning breeze, often have a kind of absent-minded smile; like people listening. And their smiles are just politeness.