“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.”

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.

Trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it.

The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

Envying another man’s happiness is madness; you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned.

Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.

The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

Beautiful people are not always good, but good people are always beautiful.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

How beautiful it would be if the poor could occupy in our hearts the place they have in the heart of God!

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

Beauty without expression is boring.

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.

Everyone is beautiful, everyone is perfect and everyone is lovely.