“I can’t expect others to share my virtues. It’s good enough for me if they share my vices.”

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

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

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.

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.

Trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.