“Lessons are not given, they are taken.”

You don’t remember days, you remember moments.

Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.

All our “most sacred affections ” are merely prosaic habit.

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.

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.

Knowledge of divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity.

The best books are those that tell you what you know already.

How we use the knowledge we gain determines our progress on earth, in space or on the moon. Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

Love is one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

Wealth tends to create enemies, whereas knowledge tends to warm hearts.

Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene.