Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.

The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

How can a man become great if he does not feel in himself the force and the will to inflict great pain.

And how does one basically recognize good development? In that a well-developed man does our senses good: that he is carved from wood which is hard, delicate, and sweet-smelling, all at the same time.