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

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

You have to let other people be right’ was his answer to their insults. ‘It consoles them for not being anything else.

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.

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.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

Remembrance is to the heart what water is to the fish. And what is the state of a fish that leaves water?

Envy, like flames, soars upwards.

You know when you have found your prince because you not only have a smile on your face but in your heart as well. Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart. Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.

They sold us the idea of happiness at the price of actual happiness.

“I wish things we different” he said. “we are the ones that make the difference” she said.

They gave our Master a crown of thorns, why do we hope for a crown of roses?

A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.