He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.

Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. Your own village means that you're not alone, that you know there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you.

The act the act must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark.

We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.

It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.

How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

All our most sacred affections are merely prosaic habit.

In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.

There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.

I've discovered nothing. but do you remember how much we talked when we were boys? We talked just for the fun of it. We knew very well it was only talk, but still we enjoyed it.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.

Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own.

The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.

When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own--the place where we live--and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.