War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.

For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.

He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.

He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.

How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?... All will end in death, all!

A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.