One doesn't know one's self what grain one sows, that works on and on, through one and through many lives, transmitted from heart to heart and from lips to lips.

Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph; with time it fades.

Never can a room look comfortable without books ... Books ought to be scattered all over the house, even in the passages, in the bedroom, les livres du chevet, everywhere.

My greatest wish is to write in such a manner that all may think they have written it themselves.

You can never make someone punctual who is not, or quick who is slow, or lively who wants to plod on carefully. I have learnt that every fault is an exaggerated quality, nothing else.

Those who look for reasons to hate miss opportunities to love.

I am quite above physical death and believe it to be only the birth throes for a much purer life in a much purer draping.

[Written in 1901:] Nothing has been so deplorable for countries as centralization. I am afraid when I see Germany grow so powerful, and centralizing in Berlin; it is the beginning of the end!

Being brave is about the everyday points of bravery that when taken together and viewed from a collective perspective make for an extraordinary life of love.

Oh-do be careful with that! That's my Buddha hand grenade. Twist the head twice and throw it and anyone within ten yards can say their prayers.

By the time I entered college, I had decided not to have children, a decision that was never regretted. Accordingly, I was careful to court only girls who wanted to have professional careers.

A few fat files are better than a lot of thin ones.

One person caring about another represents life's greatest value.

Our Soviet society is socialist because private ownership of factories, plants, land, banks and means of transportation has been abolished in our country, and replaced by public ownership.

Just like becoming an expert in wine, you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford.

I'd come to respect the bag.

Retail is selling things that don't come back to customers who do.

The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; perhaps it kills them.