To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.

By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst expect the best and take what comes.

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.

In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.

Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence.

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.