A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.

With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.

The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.

The speed with which bureaucracy has invaded almost every branch of human activity is something astounding once one thinks about it.