“No man is a complete mystery except to himself.”

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.

Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.

Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

When I am not too sad to listen, music is my consolation.

The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections.