The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi . . .

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.