Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.
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Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.
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The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven.
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Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time.
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Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.
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The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
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A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.
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Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.
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Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in life.
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One does not adopt a new idea, one slips into it.
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A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
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Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or wings, it is, for that reason, to be of no account?
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True, what you sacrifice for the world is but poorly recognized by it; for it is man that rules and reaps the harvest; the thousand night watches and sacrifices by which a mother secures the state a hero or a poet are forgotten, not even mentioned, for the mother herself does not mention them, and so one century after another do the wives, unknown and unrewarded send forth the arrows, the starts the storm-birds and the nightingales of time.
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Man is a useless passion.
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Words are loaded pistols.
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Hell is other people.
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Existence precedes and rules essence.
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As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.
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Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
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I am responsible for everything except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
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Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
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Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. When a storm approaches thee, be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower.
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If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
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I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.
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I am condemned to freedom. I am not free because I can make choices, but because I must make them, all the time, even when I think I have no choice to make.
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Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
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Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.
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Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.
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No one is more profoundly sad as one who laughs too much.
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Everything has been figured out except how to live.
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