War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. - Thomas Mann

What an absurd torture for the artist to know that an audience identifies him with a work that, within himself, he has moved beyond and that was merely a game played with something in which he does not believe.

If Goethe claimed towards the end of his life that every reasonable person is a moderate Liberal, then in our time one must say: Every reasonable person is a moderate Socialist.

Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily - no hourly - and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim.