“What an old maid I’m getting to be. Lacking the courage to be in love with death!”

The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea.

What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?

Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.

Faith assuages, guides, restores.

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.

Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don’t know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.

Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.

I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.

Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.

Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.

Oh! If only we were naked now, and free to watch our protruding parts align; To whisper – both of us – in ecstasy!

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!

Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

The sea – this truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities – courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.

It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

Love is like water; like a river crushing through the mountains to carve its own path. Love will make its own way but only if you have the courage to follow.

All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.