“It would be impossible for any individual to accept the feelings, or emotions of temptation without wishing to gain something great in return.”

“You cannot wish for a good life that is full of joy and peace without sacrificing something in return.”

“We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him”

“We wish a great Poland, great with its achievements, culture, forms of social life, its position in Europe. The only way to gain this is by socialism accepted by society, constantly enriched by the everyday life experience.”

“I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it.”

“I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.”

“I feel a kind of intellectual regret, not an emotional regret, at having left my parents and that world behind. But it's not a great weight on my soul. In a way I wish it were. To leave one’s background without guilt is an indication of shallowness of character, I suspect.”

“We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”

“An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.”

“All that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.”