Romain Rolland

Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of today.

If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.

Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

To understand everything is to hate nothing.

One makes mistakes; that is life.
But it is never a mistake to have loved.

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself.

The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.