But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.

I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small.

I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.

Poor is the power of the lead that becomes bullets compared to the power of the hot metal that becomes types.

My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.

That a literature in our time is living is shown in that way that it debates problems.

A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.

Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house.

I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself.

School is a foretaste of life.

The Danish glee: the national version of cheerfulness.

Being gifted needs courage.

Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, I had good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, two years my junior.

Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods.

Any feeling that I was enriching my mind from those surrounding me was unfortunately rare with me.

But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty.

Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in active intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or with relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at school.

When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance.

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals.

I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values.

He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.

I did not know what it was to be happy for a whole day at a time, scarcely for an hour.

But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.

I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.

But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was sometimes both.

My first experiences of academic friendship made me smile in after years when I looked back on them. But my circle of acquaintances had gradually grown so large that it was only natural new friendships should grow out of it.

It gradually dawned upon me that there was no one more difficult to please than my mother.

The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity.

I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry.

I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thing often satisfied one's feeling of honour.

The person upon whom the schoolboys' attention centred was, of course, the Headmaster.

I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light.

The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It was impossible to have boxes enough of them.

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not.

It was jolly in the country. A cow and little pigs to play with and milk warm from the cow.

Times have changed since George Herbert... but the principle and spirit in which he ministered as a priest remains an inspiration and model for all priests.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that.

Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

You know, sometimes I get moments of inspiration when I'm writing something and then the task seems so daunting that it just kind of scares me away.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

The prophets, who were very many, proclaim and declare the one God; for, being filled with the inspiration of the one God, they predicted things to come, with agreeing and harmonious voice.

One of the things I try to be very careful of is not taking a movie when I know I have no inspiration left.

The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds.

Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.

Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it.

Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.