It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.
But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.
There’s no better cure for the fear of taking after one’s father, than not to know who he is.
This is my thesis: Do you know what is needful to turn an honest man into a rogue! A change of scene–a moment’s forgetfulness suffice.
I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, “Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.
What would be the description of happines? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told.
Rather than recount his life as he has lived it, he must live his life as he will recount it.
Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.
Nothing can make a face more impenetrable than the mask of kindliness.
In other people’s company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring…
We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us
In a world in which everyone cheats, it’s the honest man who passes for a charlatan.
When I was younger, I used to make resolutions, which I imagined were virtuous. I was less anxious to be what I was, than to become what I wished to be. Now, I am not far from thinking that in irresolution lies the secret of not going old.
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.
Because it was natural, could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature!
Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.
Those who complimented me were those who understood me the least.
There is a germ of revolt lying in the spirit of inquiry and critical curiosity.
He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of profound disgust–a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of everything.
One can always find hands for a work of destruction.
Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward?
I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.
To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.