“Desire makes everything blossom.”

Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.

A picture’s beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it.

We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things.

The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.

You can’t learn the truth about a man’s intentions by asking him.

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.

A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.

The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.

It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty.

There comes in all our lives a time, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.

Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.

Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify our desire for knowledge than our best-laid plans.

To desire is to obtain to aspire is to achieve.

Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.

The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.

If your real desire is to be good, there is no need to wait for the money before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are.

I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.