Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

Music is...a form of remembering, a return to the seasons of the heart long gone.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

I know of no better definition of love than the one given by Proust - Love is space and time measured by the heart.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

Love is born of faith, lives on hope, and dies of charity.

One lived in the impression that nobody could ever compete with the 'Nutcracker' or 'A Christmas Carol.'

Joy gives you strength.Hope gives you fortitude.Faith gives you courage.Love gives you power.

Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.

The fifth sense is "common sense"- either you have it or you don't.

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying.

How I hate the attitude of ordinary people to life. How I loathe ordinariness! How from my soul I abhor nice simple people, with their eternal price list. It makes my blood boil.

What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.

... For such as truly love the world, a thousand years would fade like the dream of one night.

One has to be willing to face the fact that what has transpired in Iraq is not exactly a very successful exercise.