“Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.”

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

You have to let other people be right’ was his answer to their insults. ‘It consoles them for not being anything else.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.

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

The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

Envying another man’s happiness is madness; you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

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.

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.

All men know their children mean more than life.

It’s not much of a tail, but I’m sort of attached to it.

When you’re an introvert like me and you’ve been lonely for a while, and then you find someone who understands you, you become really attached to them. It’s a real release.

Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections.

Attachment is the opposite of healing.

It is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

The way to change others’ minds is with affection, and not anger.

Don’t get too much emotionally attached to anyone.