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

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.

Lessons are not given, they are taken.

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one’s own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.

Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.

The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else’s.

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.

The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.

We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.

Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.

What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.

Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be “lifelong”? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?

One must look for one thing only, to find many.

I am much pleased to find how very well I stand work & how my powers of attention & continued effort increase.

No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.

Attacking people with disabilities is the lowest display of power I can think of.

We are born to action; and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.

I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power.

History is a child building a sandcastle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world.

We know that political power doesn’t flow from the sleeve of a dashiki. We know that political power flows from the barrel of a gun.

Change. It has the power to uplift, to heal, to stimulate, surprise, open new doors, bring fresh experience and create excitement in life.