Georg Brandes

I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

School is a foretaste of life.

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

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

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.

Being gifted needs courage.