The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by various essences, until it becomes a great conflagration

They were the only members of their family, and they were both humble, crushed, and thrust aside by life; they were united in sadness and tenderness by a bond of mutual pity and common suffering, borne in secret. With the Kraffts—robust, noisy, brutal, solidly built for living, and living joyously—these two weak, kindly creatures, out of their setting, so to speak, outside life, understood and pitied each other without ever saying anything about it.

But, uncle, isn’t it possible to make other songs, new songs?” “Why make them? There are enough for everything. There are songs for when you are sad, and for when you are gay; for when you are weary, and for when you are thinking of home; for when you despise yourself, because you have been a vile sinner, a worm upon the earth; for when you want to weep, because people have not been kind to you; and for when your heart is glad because the world is beautiful, and you see God’s heaven, which, like Him, is always kind, and seems to laugh at you…. There are songs for everything, everything. Why should I make them?

If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.

I know at last what distinguishes man from animals; financial worries.

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.