Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Woe to these people who have no appetite for the very dish that their age serves up.
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.
If only we could lean over the soul we love and see as in a mirror the image we cast!
Clear and precise ideas are the most dangerous, for one does not dare to change them.
Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death
Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation.
With each book you write you should lose the admirers you gained with the previous one.
The great artist is one whom constraint exalts, for whom the obstacle is a springboard.
Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
I advise the young to tell themselves constantly that most often it is up to them alone.
In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring.
Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortunes
We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.
I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.
The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy.
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Every perfect action is accompanied by pleasure. By that you can tell what you ought to do.
Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!
The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.
Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers the most from its own limitations.
Believe in your strength and your vision. Learn to repeat to yourself, 'It all depends on me'.
He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands on others.
Though a revolution may call itself "national," it always marks the victory of a single party.
Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.
Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.
It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.
Actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.
Each of us really understands in others only those feelings he is capable of producing himself.
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.
True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.
Each thought becomes an anxiety in my brain. I am becoming the ugliest of all things: a busy man.
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
Most often it happens that one attributes to others only the feelings of which one is capable oneself.
The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.
Our judgements about things vary according to the time left us to live -that we think is left us to live.
Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory.
An unprejudiced mind is probably the rarest thing in the world; to nonprejudice I attach the greatest value.
Man: The most complex of beings, and thus the most dependent of beings. On all that made you up, you depend.