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.

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.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Because beauty isn't enough, there must be something more.

Oh! this opponent, this collaborator against your will, whose notion of beauty always differs from yours and whose means are often too limited for active assistance to your intentions!

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.

Beauty set up distance between other people and me. It warped their behavior.

Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything.

The double hundred Fowler hit in the Madras Test was an absolute beauty.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

I had a lot of resentment for a while toward Kim Novak. But I don't mind her anymore. She's okay. We've become friends. I even asked her before this trip for some beauty tips.

You don't know what the Chinese expect in the way of beauty. The presentation is just a farce. You come into a room filled with 50 people and they don't talk to you. There's very little interaction.

Then Christ shall be clothed with all the beauty of the elect as if with a long tunic variously adorned, in which He shall shine as if covered with all manner of precious stones.

There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.