Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

Hope is a talent like any other.

The young are so much more vulnerable than the old - the stuff is still warm and malleable, it takes impressions.

The strangest thing about life is not its frightful cruelty, but that it can be gentle.

A nation has honor precisely as it has fleas - on this or that body. The statesman who talks of honor - unless he means something else, quite different - is a rogue.

An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.