“Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game is finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul.”

“Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.”

“We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity – gunpowder and romantic love. ”

“The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.”

“The friendship of two young people,' says Goethe somewhere, 'is delightful when the girl likes to learn and the boy to teach.' It will perhaps be said that this virgin curiosity is no more than unconscious physical desire; but what does it matter, if this desire sharpens the mind and deadens conceit?”

“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.”

“Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of truth. 'Lost Illusion' is the undisclosed title of every novel.”