“Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.”

Lessons are not given, they are taken.

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one’s own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.

Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.

The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else’s.

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.

The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.

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

Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.

What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.

Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be “lifelong”? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?

One must look for one thing only, to find many.

Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.

I was born into it and there was nothing I could do about it. It was there, like air or food, or any other element. The only question with wealth is what you do with it.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

The secret of perfect health lies in keeping the mind always cheerful – never worried, never hurried, never borne down by any fear, thought or anxiety.

The real middle class India that has always been looking for a voice that is its very own. I write about it because I belong to it.

Those born blind cannot see; similarly blind are those in the grip of lust. Proud men have no perception of evil; and those bent on acquiring riches see no sin in their actions.

My dear child, if you desire to be free from the cycle of birth and death, then abandon the objects of sense gratification as poison. Drink instead the nectar of forbearance, upright conduct, mercy, cleanliness and truth.

Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.

Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.