If men refuse to be kindled, sparks can only burn themselves out, just as paper images and carriages burn out on the street during funerals.

I thought: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.

Whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk.

Women have a mother-nature and a daughter-nature; there are no women with a wife-nature. The quality of wife is an acquired character; it is a combination of mother and daughter.

When you talk with famous scholars, the best thing is to pretend that occasionally you do not quite understand them. If you understand too little, you will be despised; if you understand too much, you will be disliked; if you just fail occasionally to understand them, you will suit each other very well.

Hope is a path on the mountainside. At first there is no path. But then there are people passing that way. And there is a path.

Why should young people look for guides who hang out gided placards to advertise themselves? They would do better to look for friends, unite with them, and advance together towards some quarter where it seems possible to survive.