International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.

My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I can write with it and I can play with it. ... I think your hand concentrates for you. I don't know why it should be so.

Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits.

I don't believe that to understand is necessarily to pardon, but I feel that to understand makes one forget that one cannot pardon.