No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books. - Romain Rolland

If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. … For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay.

چه قدرتی است قدرت جان‌ها بر جان‌ها! هم آنان که زیر نفوذ آن می‌روند و هم آنان که آن را اعمال می‌کنند، هر دو به یک اندازه از آن بی‌خبرند. و با این همه زندگی جهان از جزر و مدهایی ساخته شده که به فرمان این جاذبه ی اسرارآمیز است.

In politics, he has always been a republican with advanced Socialist sympathies, and internationalist at heart, and, as they said in the eighteenth century, a "citizen of the world." He has always fought social injustice. In art, he loves, above all, Beethoven, Shakespeare, and Goethe... Rembrandt is the painter dearest to him. But his chosen country is Italy.