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

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

When I am not too sad to listen, music is my consolation.

The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections.

We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body.

An hour is not merely an hour, it is a vase full of scents and sounds and projects and climates.

In love, happiness is an abnormal state.

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy.

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.

Death is in truth an illness from which we recover

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill.

Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

Act with courage and dignity; stick to the ideals that give meaning to life.

Let each dawn find us courageous, brought closer, heeding the lights before the fight is over.

There is only one thing that remains to us, that cannot be taken away: to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that have given meaning to life.

There is always something moving, brewing. There are ambitious people everywhere. Wicked people. The only thing to do is to deal with them with courage and decision. One must beware of uncertainty, weakness or conflicting emotions – they lead to defeat.

We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.

Most of us know exactly what it is that creates the pain, confusion, stagnation and disruption in our lives. When we find something or someone creating in our lives that which we do not want, we must muster the courage and strength to stop it.

In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.

Have the courage to be exactly who you are without apology. Admit your mistakes without beating yourself up. Release all shame! Release all guilt! You cannot live if you are hiding behind what was. Focus on what is, right now, and that is you!