“I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.”

The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea.

What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?

Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.

Faith assuages, guides, restores.

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.

Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don’t know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.

Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.

Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.

Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.

Oh! If only we were naked now, and free to watch our protruding parts align; To whisper – both of us – in ecstasy!

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!

In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.

During misfortunes, nothing aggravates our condition more, than to be esteemed deserving of them.

In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune.

There are many self-help books by Ph.D.s, but I hold a different degree: an I.B.T.I.A.-I’ve Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune.

I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.

My birth was my first misfortune.

To be aware & not to act: The worst misfortune.

Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.