What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

Without risk, faith is an impossibility.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!

To the frivolous Christianity is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.

The reign of the tyrant ends with his death, and the reign of the martyr starts with it.

One should be an enigma not just to others but to oneself too. I study myself. When I'm tired of that I light a cigar to pass the time, and think: God only knows what the good Lord really meant with me, or what He meant to make of me.