Happiness lies so far from man, but he must begin by daring to will it.

Corporal punishment is as humiliating for him who gives it as for him who receives it; it is ineffective besides. Neither shame nor physical pain have any other effect than a hardening one.

When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination.

At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.

The mother is the most precious possessions of the nation, so precious that society advances its highest well-being when it protects the functions of the mother.

Education can give you a skill, but a liberal education can give you dignity.

Everything, everything in war is barbaric... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.

The emancipation of women is practically the greatest egoistic movement of the nineteenth century, and the most intense affirmation of the right of the self that history has yet seen.

The belief that we some day shall be able to prevent war is to me one with the belief in the possibility of making humanity really human.

Love requires peace, love will dream; it cannot live upon the remnants of our time and our personality.

A great artist is conscious of the talent and the power he possesses, otherwise he would not see his faults, and so would not be able to improve.

Stop spending so much time trying to prove what you already know to people who don't really matter. It just makes you look insecure and lacking self-confidence.

...morality is a check upon the strongest temptations.

The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.

There is always a fear that i’ll be in Europe somewhere, and this little blue-eyed kid would come over to me with his mom and go, “dada, dada”.

I think it's more and more important to spend time with your children, because it seems to be harder and harder for them to succeed as their parents have succeeded.

The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth.

I choose to paint beauty.

It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it.

I'm going to spend my life writing poems, turning them into music that will affect people and touch their hearts. I'm going to write the songs that people can't write for themselves.