Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.

Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.

I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.

The American child, driven to school by bus and stupefied by television, is losing contact with reality. There is an enormous gap between the sheer weight of the textbooks that he carries home from school and his capacity to interpret what is in them.

The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.

Do not mistake me. I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less.