“One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.”

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

Truth is a point of view about things.

Desire makes everything blossom.

Sometimes in this life, under the stress of an exceptional emotion, people do say what they think.

When you work to please others you can’t succeed, but the things you do to satisfy yourself stand a chance of catching someone’s interest.

The only paradise is paradise lost.

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

Instead of seeking new landscapes, develop new eyes.

Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

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.

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going.

One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.

One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.

There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.

Dance is an outpouring of the exuberance of one’s life energies.

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.