There is nothing in the world so monstrously vast as our indifference.

Nothing could have been more imprudent or more natural than this reply. It reflected the ecstasy inspired by great crises.

He best thing to do is to loosen my grip on my pen and let it go wandering about until it finds an entrance. There must be one -- everything depends on the circumstances, a rule applicable as much to literary style as to life. Each word tugs another one along, one idea another, and that is how books, governments and revolutions are made -- some even say that is how Nature created her species.

Dreams disdain fine lines and finishing touches on landscapes -- they content themselves with thick but representative brushstrokes.

The best thing to do is to loosen my grip on my pen and let it go wandering about until it finds an entrance. There must be one -- everything depends on the circumstances, a rule applicable as much to literary style as to life. Each word tugs another one along, one idea another, and that is how books, governments and revolutions are made -- some even say that is how Nature created her species.

The conclusion, therefore, is that there are two major forces in society: love, which multiplies the species, and the nose, which subordinates it to the individual. Procreation, equilibrium.

In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.

I considered the case and realized that if something can exist in opinion without existing in reality, or exist in reality without existing in opinion, the conclusion is that of the two parallel lives, only opinion is necessary -- not reality, which is only a secondary consideration.

He had found in himself the perfect, undeniable case of insanity. He possessed wisdom, patience, tolerance, truthfulness, loyalty, and moral fortitude--all the qualities that go to make an utter madman.

One of the roles of man is to shut his eyes and keep them shut to see if he can continue into the night of his old age the dream curtailed in the night of his youth.

Bacamarte evidenced neither vanity nor modesty; he listened in silence, as impassive as a stone god.

Each person is worth the value put on them by the affection of others, and that is where popular wisdom has found that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

He was happy because, after such a long study, experimentation, and struggle, he could at last affirm the ultimate truth: there never were and never would be any madmen in Itaguai or anywhere else.

There is nothing worse than giving the longest of legs to the smallest of ideas.

Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. He is wrong; man is a thinking erratum. Each period in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one and that in turn will be corrected by the next, until publication of the definitive edition, which the publisher donates to the worms.

He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.

His eyes, blind to external reality but highly perceptive in the realm of the inner life, rose from the book to the ceiling and returned to the book.

Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next.

In woman sex corrects banality, in men it aggravates it.