“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

“It’s so hard to speak and say things that can’t be said. It’s so silent. How to translate the silence of the real encounter between the two of us? So hard to explain: I looked straight at you for a few instants. Such moments are my secret. There was what’s called perfect communion. I call it an acute state of happiness.”

“There comes a stage when the touch of reality becomes so sharp that one is no longer an individual harassed by circumstances, but a living being cut into slices… That which a moment ago might have seemed like a living planet, a throb of splendor in a universe of night, becomes of a sudden a dead thing like the moon burning with fire of ice. In such moments all things are made clear - the meaning of dreams, the wisdom that precedes birth, the survival of faith, the stupidity of being a god.”