Quotes from Romain Rolland

a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.

the public will only stand genius in infintesimal doses,sprinkled with mannerisms and fashionable literature...A fashionable genius!Doesn't that make you laugh?..what a waste of power!

But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses - mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river, and had sat down beside her in the reeds - without knowing why - and had given her his hand.

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

I would rather have this life of combat than the moral calm and mournful stupor of these last years. God give me struggle, enemies, howling crowds, all the combot of which I am capable.

Basta un instante para hacer un héroe, y una vida entera para hacer un hombre.

Il faut savoir allier le pessimisme de l´intelligence à l´optimisme de la volonté.

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.

One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.

The greatest human ideal is the great cause of bringing together the thoughts of Europe and Asia; the great soul of India will topple our world.

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.

Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also love theirs.

A hero is a man who does what he can.

One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her!

Most men are essentially dead by thirty.

If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another.

For my part, I am not so sure at bottom that man is, as he says, the king of nature; he is far more its devastating tyrant. I believe he has many things to learn from animal societies, older than his own and of infinite variety.

All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities

Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with a little truth and many lies.

The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art.

There are some dead who are more alive than the living.

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.