Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.

The greater part of our best years has been passed for our generation in these two great worldconvulsions. All will be changed after this war, which spends in one month more than nations earned before in yearsthere is no more security in our time than in those of the Reformation or the fall of Rome.

But in the intellectual world, there is room for all opposing forces: even that which never appears victorious in the real world continues to be effective as a dynamic force (in the intellectual world) and precisely the unfulfilled ideals prove to be the most invincible.

When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.

Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.

Nothing that has ever been thought and said with a clear mind and pure ethical strength is totally in vain; even if it comes froma weak hand and is imperfectly formed, it inspires the ethical spirit to constantly renewed creation.

For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands.