It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.

If we forgive God for his crime against us, which is to have made us finite creatures, He will forgive our crime against him, which is that we are finite creatures.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

The great error of nearly all studies of war, an error into which all socialists have fallen, has been to consider war as an episode in foreign politics when it is especially an act of internal politics and the most atrocious act of all . . . Since the directing apparatus has no other way of fighting the enemy than by sending its own soldiers, under compulsion, to their death-the war of one state against another state resolves itself into a war of the state and the military apparatus against its own people.

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

To be innocent is to bear the weight of the entire universe. It is to throw away the counterweight.

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).