People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Failure too is a form of death.

Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!