It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.
Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.
One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything, and consequently get nothing.
From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair.
Our deeds attach themselves to us like the flame to phosphorus. They constitute our brilliance, to be sure, but only in so far as they consume us.
You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.
In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.
Drunkenness is never anything but a substitute for happiness.
Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger.
Though a revolution may call itself "national," it always marks the victory of a single party.
I would like the events never to be told directly by the author, but rather to be introduced (and several times, from various angles) by those among the characters on whom they will have had any effect. I would like those events, in the account they will make of them, to appear slightly distorted; a kind of interest stems, for the reader, from the simple fact that he should need to restore. The story requires his collaboration in order to properly take shape.
If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.
No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.
He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands on others.
The young people who come to me in the hope of hearing me utter a few memorable maxims are quite disappointed. Aphorisms are not my forte, I say nothing but banalities.... I listen to them and they go away delighted.
I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts.
The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.
Man's first and greatest victory must be won against the gods.
I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.
There is a law in life: When one door closes to us another one opens.
The truth is, I hoped the cure would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him -- I could hit on nothing that wasn't charming. It's wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating.
Nothing is good for everyone, but only relatively to some people.
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