The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvellously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life.

There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs co…

I believe it safe to say that all progress must lead, not to further progress, but finally to the negation of progress, a return to the point of departure.

Of late, men seem to have been possessed by an incomprehensible impulse to strip themselves of everything with which nature has endowed them in order to make t…

In this painting, I was in fact in quest for a certain hour, which was and which remains always the most beautiful hour of the day in Moscow. The sun is alread…

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then - as I am listening now.

Here's to the day when it is May And care as light as a feather, When your little shoes and my big boots Go tramping over the heather.