You know, [women] do not really condemn any weakness: rather, they try to humiliate or disarm our strengths. That is why women arethe reward, not of the warrior, but of the criminal.

Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.

I make myself strict rules in order to correct my nature. But it is my nature that I finally obey.

It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.

There is only one class of men, the privileged class

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.