“To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?”

“Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.”

“People who say "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" never felt a broken heart.”

“When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.”

“It was men’s ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.”

“It's only now when words are said
that break my heart in two,
I wonder how you can endure
all I've said, all I say to you.”

“And it's too hard to focus through all this doubt
I keep making this to-do list but nothing gets crossed out
Working on the record seems pointless now
When the world ends who's gonna hear it?”

“Be humane, be just and recognise that, over all ambitions, intrigues and hatred, there is the Motherland, the eternal of the people, and we always have to meet there, even though we disagree sometimes.”

“There's nothing to gain when there's nothing to be lost.
There's nothing to gain if you stay behind and count the cost.
Make the decision that you can be who you can be,
You can be.
Tasting the fruit come to the Liberty Tree.”

“Since the end of the period of belief, leaders exalt every defect, every kind of sadism, and gain all the more through their vices: vanity, ambition, war, death in a word.”