Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.

To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this.

If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death No death may be called futile.

For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.

Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.

True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.

We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.