“Where in this wide world can a person find nobility without pride, friendship without envy or beauty without vanity? Here, where grace is laced with muscle and strength by gentleness confined. He serves without servility, he has fought without enmity. There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent; there is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.”

“Not only is a book without conflict something no one wants to read, but a life without conflict is something where nothing is gained, nothing is earned, nothing is won.”

“Life is nothing without friendship.”

“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”

“And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty”

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.”