Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?

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.

Truth to tell, we are all criminals if we remain silent.

It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one's own existence.

Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny.

All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings.

There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.

In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.

Only the misfortune of exile can provide the in-depth understanding and the overview into the realities of the world.

Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.

Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.

A writer is not born but made through study and sheer willpower and ability to embrace beauty and agony.

In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina.

An old building is like a show. You smell the soul of a building. And the building tells you how to redo it.

The response you get when you're young like "oh you're just getting laughs because you're a little kid and you're cute". They weren't trying to encourage me at all or tell me to keep pursuing this.

A defence in the Inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger.

When you are on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey.

God uses singers in a mighty way, and I am grateful.

Without God, life is like a school without a teacher. It is a wire with no current passing through it; it is a body with no soul.

Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture.

This heart, my own dear mother, bends, With love's true instinct, back to thee!