But has anything happened to you? Your face is so strangely distorted.
   No, I'm smiling, he said. This is going to be my way of smiling. I want this grimace to be my hallmark.

Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity.

God preserve me from growing wise! Yes, I intend to mumble toothlessly to my deathbed bystanders: God preserve me from growing wise!

But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe.

The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest -- who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.

And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

In his younger days Grindhusen had been as stubborn and awkward as they come; now he was mild and stupid.

But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.

Today riches and honours have been lavished on me, but one gift has been lacking, the most important one of all, the only one that matters, the gift of youth.

No, I don't admire the genius. But I admire and love the result of the genius's activity in the world, of which the great man is only the poor necessary tool, only, so to speak, the paltry awl to bore with.

It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.

The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow.

Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work.

No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry -- to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science.

A shaft of sweetness shoots through me from top to toe when the sun rises; I shoulder my gun in silent exaltation.

Earth and sea merged, the sea tossed itself in the air in a fantastic dance, into the shapes of men and horses and tattered banners. I stood in the lee of an overhanging rock and thought of many things.

Great men are excellent topics of conversation, but the superior man, the superior men, the masters, the universal spirits on horseback, have to stop and search their memories merely to know who these so-called great men might be. And so the great man is left with the crowd, the worthless majority...for his admirers.

And there by the pump stood a group of women with their hands under their aprons, watching the procession and discussing in hushed voices all this floral display and pomp.