It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point..

Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you ….

Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural….

Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity o….

The face of the night will be an old wound that reopens each evening, impassive and living. The distant silence will ache like a soul, mute, in the d….

Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man..

Don't mix wine and women..

You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth….

All our "most sacred affections " are merely prosaic habit..

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recogniz….

The only joy in the world is to begin..

A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself..

We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word..

There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, to look back to when we were children..

We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God..

There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes….

People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't un….

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingn….

Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always..

Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd..

To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Those who, by their very ….