“If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.”

“Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.”

“History is the essence of innumerable biographies.”

“War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let t...”

“Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.”

“If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.”

“For those who are poor in happiness, each time is a first time; happiness never becomes a habit.”

“One should cultivate good habits of memory, for it is capable of making existence a Paradise or an Inferno.”

“Here is a wonderful habit: From time to time stop; move not; speak not; just watch the nature, because this is the best way to realise explicitly the miracles surrounding us!”

“Life at the edge of the world, it was felt, could go on forever.”

“I always wanted to be a farmer. There is a tradition of that in my family.”

“Tradition has made women cowardly.”