“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.”

Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.

Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination.

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.