You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.
To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.
Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.
No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
No harm comes to man from outside alone: dumbness is the objective spirit.
I wish life was not so short, he thought. languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.
The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.
I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.
'It is wiser to give way!' A sad comment, which only goes to prove that stupidity rules the world.
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.
Even the smallest light has its little atmosphere.
War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.
In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.
Nature is truth. Art is the highest truth.
He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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