So you, too, like fruitcake? (RW on meeting Lenin in Zurich during World War I.)

Every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls

I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.

When we realize that words can destroy something good, wonderful, and dear, and that by keeping silent we can avoid causing the least damage or harm, it’s easy to stay silent.

At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death.

Today I told myself that in actual fact anyone who takes an innocuous and random delight in his life is an absolute lummox.

I am not here [in the sanitarium] to write, but to be mad.

That lovely things exist is a lovely thought.

How uninteresting interesting things can become.

Listening to music, I always have exactly the same feeling: something’s missing. Never will I learn the cause of this gentle sadness, never will I wish to investigate it.

With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings.

The unhappy people of the known paths must certainly try the unknown paths in their search of happiness!

I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I have never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it, namely, that, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

Children who remember their past lives offer the most compelling evidence yet for reincarnation.

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

You must grow like a tree, not like a mushroom

Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.