“Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.”

“To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.”

“To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.”

“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”

“The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.”

“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.”

“I can, therefore I am.”

“The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.”