“The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.”

It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of.

When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.

Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.

There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.

Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.

Here’s the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.

Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one’s own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment.

To know the world, one must construct it.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

If God cared only about religious activities, then the Pharisees would have been heroes of the faith.

When diplomacy has been exhausted, the Security Council must become involved. Questions about Iran’s nuclear activities remain unanswered, despite repeated efforts by the IAEA.

Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole.

We need to make sure our activities and our attitudes line up with what pleases God first and foremost. Wherever we focus our attention the most will become the driving force in our lives.

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.

If disproportionate results come from one activity, then you must give that one activity disproportionate time.

The activity you’re most avoiding contains your biggest opportunity.

This drink has a magical power. It strengthens the weak, and revives those who have fainted. Those tired after work and physical activity can return their life forces by this drink much sooner than by nourishment. It works as a diuretic, an appetizer, an antitoxin.