In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring..

I find just as much profit in cultivating my hates as my loves..

It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life..

Too chaste an adolescence makes for a dissolute old age. It is doubtless easier to give up something one has known than something one imagines..

The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh..

Solitude is bearable only with God..

Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life..

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothi….

An opinion, though it is original, does not necessarily differ from the accepted opinion; the important thing is that it does not try to conform to i….

The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy..

Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination..

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason..

Prejudices are the props of civilization..

At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with w….

Our judgements about things vary according to the time left us to live -that we think is left us to live..

How do you know that the fruit is ripe? Simply because it leaves the branch..

From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair..

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits..

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature..

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them..

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable..