"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you."
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
"These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs."
"Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning."
"There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality."
"All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still."