Y lentamente, de su oscuro miedo empezó a brotar algo que todavía no era felicidad, pero sí un asombro ante la diversidad de la vida.

There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice.

It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.

He read as others pray, as gamblers follow the spinning of the roulette wheel, as drunkards stare into vacancy; he read with such profound absorption that ever since I first watched him the reading of ordinary mortals seemed a pastime.

Wie ich heimschritt bemerkte ich mit einemmal vor mir meinen eigenen Schatten so wie ich den Schatten des anderen Krieges hinter dem jetzigen sah. Er ist durch all diese Zeit nicht mehr von mir gewichen dieser Schatten er überhing jeden meiner Gedanken bei Tag und bei Nacht vielleicht liegt sein dunkler Umriß auch auf manchen...

The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart’s history.

When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.

Now I am discovering the world once more. England has widened my horizon.

No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.

Od onog ondašnjeg čovjeka ja sam se, i to upravo zbog onog doživljaja, potpuno odvojio, promatram ga sa strane, sasvim mirno i hladno, i mogu ga opisati kao prijatelja o kojem znam mnogo i sve ono što je bitno, ali ja uopće više nisam taj čovjek. Mogao bih pričati o njemu, prekoravati ga ili ga...

N’aie pas peur de mes paroles: une morte ne veut plus rien, elle ne veut ni amour, ni pitié, ni réconfort.

All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings.

The idea of Jewish unity, of a plan, an organization, unfortunately exists only in the brains of Hitler and Streicher.

Nothing on earth puts more pressure on the human mind than nothing.

Alors, dans l’obscurité j’ai pleuré de bonheur.

Celui qui n’est pas passionné devient tout au plus un pédagogue; c’est toujours par l’intérieur qu’il faut aller aux choses, toujours, toujours en partant de la passion.

What decides whether a man will become immortal, is not his character but his vitality. Nothing save intensity confers immortality. A man manifests himself more vividly, in proportion as he is strong and unified, effective and unique. Immortality knows nothing of morality or immorality, of good or evil; it measures only work and strength; it...

Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.

He felt a kind of bridal expectation, sweet and sensuous yet vaguely mingled with anticipatory fear of its own fulfilment, with the mysterious shiver felt when something endlessly desired suddenly comes physically close to the astonished heart.

She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long...

Und der einzige wirklich beschwingte Glücksmoment, den ich der Schule zu danken habe, wurde der Tag, da ich ihre Tür für immer hinter mir zuschlug.

Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child’s need for sleep.

For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener’s delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands.

Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German.

Never can the innate power of a work be hidden or locked away. A work of art can be forgotten by time; it can be forbidden and rejected but the elemental will always prevail over the ephemeral.

In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.

One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others.

Only the misfortune of exile can provide the in-depth understanding and the overview into the realities of the world.

The free, independent spirit who commits himself to no dogma and will not decide in favor of any party has no homestead on earth.

He was the kind of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh-experience, always eager to set off into the unknown territory of a little adventure, never taken by surprise because he has worked out everything in advance and...

A first premonition of the rich variety of life had come to him; for the first time he thought he had understood the nature of human beings – they needed each other even when they appeared hostile, and it was very sweet to be loved by them.

How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!

There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.

Wer einmal sich selbst gefunden, kann nichts auf dieser Welt mehr verlieren.

Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.

Often the presence of mind and energy of a person remote from the spotlight decide the course of history for centuries to come.

In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.

Fate is never too generous even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed.

Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.

Hábeis e frios calculadores podem vir demonstrar, ainda e sempre, que o sonho do erasmismo é impossível, e os factos poderão parecer dar-lhes razão; isso nao impede que sejam sempre necessários os seres que indicam aos povos aquilo que os aproxima e aquilo que os divide, e que renovam no coração dod homens a crença...

He was welcome everywhere he went, and was well-aware of his inability to tolerate solitude. He felt no inclination to be alone and avoided it as far as possible; he didn’t really want to become any better acquainted with himself. He knew that if he wanted to show his talents to best advantage, he needed...

Mais ta beauté est si singulière, c’est une bonté ouverte où chacun peut se servir autant que ses mains le lui permettent, elle est si grande, infiniment grande ta bonté, mais pardonne-moi- elle est indolente.

Lorsque j’ouvrais les yeux dans l’obscurité et que je te sentais contre mon flanc, je m’étonnais qu’il n’y eût pas d’étoiles au-dessus de moi, tant le ciel semblait présent.

Forget it all, I told myself, escape into your mind and your work, into the place where you are only your living, breathing self, not a citizen of any state, not a stake in that infernal game, the place where only what reason you have can still work to some reasonable effect in a world...

Seuls les enfants solitaires peuvent contenir toute leur passion; les autres, à trop causer éventent leurs sentiments en public, les émoussent en vaines confidences.

Homeward bound I suddenly noticed before me my own shadow as I had seen the shadow of the other war behind the actual one. During all this time it has never budged from me, that irremovable shadow, it hovers over every thought of mine by day and by night; perhaps its dark outline lies on...