“To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.”

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.

It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for.

The courage of one’s opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the other side.

My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.

Love ever unsatisfied, lives always in the moment that is about to come.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.

Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.

We need to hear the Gospel every day, because we forget it every day.

I read one psychologist’s theory that said, “Never strike a child in your anger.” When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he’s recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?

The blindness of unbelievers in no way detracts from the clarity of the gospel; the sun is no less bright because blind men do not perceive its light.

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.

A gospel that doesn’t deal with the issues of the day is not the gospel at all.

If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.

When you read the book you see that these guys aren’t holding any punches. They’re straightforward. They’re honest. They’re giving you their honest opinion.