Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.

When people look back at their childhood or youth, their wistfulness comes from the memory, not of what their lives had been in those years, but of what life had then promised to be. The expectation of some indefinable splendor, of the unusual, the exciting, the great is an attribute of youth and the process of aging is the process of that expectations' gradual extinction. One does not have to let it happen. But that fire dies for lack of fuel, under the gray weight of disappointments.

Work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom.

When two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near to each other to create, it is impossible, that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.

He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.

When I speak to you about myself, I am speaking to you about yourself. How is it you don't see that?

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time. To journey is to be born and die each minute...All the elements of life are in constant flight from us, with darkness and clarity intermingled, the vision and the eclipse; we look and hasten, reaching out our hands to clutch; every happening is a bend in the road...and suddenly we have grown old. We have a sense of shock and gathering darkness; ahead is a black doorway; the life that bore us is a flagging horse, and a veiled stranger is waiting in the shadows to unharness us.