To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.

The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.

Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth, truths are found only in the depths of thought.

Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?

Nothing is more dangerous than to stop working. It is a habit that can soon be lost, one that is easily neglected and hard to resume. A measure of day-dreaming is a good thing, like a drug prudently used ... But too much submerges and drowns. Woe to the intellectual worker who allows himself to lapse wholly from positive thinking into day-dreaming. He thinks he can easily change back, and tells himself that it is all one. He is wrong! To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse poison with a source of nourishment.

One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.