“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”

Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.

Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination.

Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.

A picture’s beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it.

We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things.

The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.

You can’t learn the truth about a man’s intentions by asking him.

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.

A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.

The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.

It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty.

There comes in all our lives a time, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.

We often confuse what we wish for with what is.

I acknowledge that struggling and failing are different; I am made stronger through my struggles.

One must care about a world one will not see.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.

To write a tragedy, a man must feel the tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews.

I think hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.

Who am I to touch your soul while the world is spinning so fast.

And when I don’t utter a word, that is when I feel the most.