“What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.”

I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

I wanted my own words. But the ones I use have been dragged through I don’t know how many consciences.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Nothingness haunts Being.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

Your judgement judges you and defines you.

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

All things are already complete in us. There is no greater delight than to be conscious of right within us. If one strives to treat others as he would be treated by them, he shall not fail to come near the perfect life.

He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books.

Do not pursue what should be, but understand what is.

He who goes to the bottom of his own heart knows his own nature; And knowing his own nature, he knows heaven.

Evil exists to glorify the good. Evil is negative good. It is a relative term. Evil can be transmuted into good. What is evil to one at one time, becomes good at another time to somebody else.

Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.

Incessant falls teach men to reform, and distress rouses their strength. Life springs from calamity, and death from ease.

When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people.