Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.

how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself.

We are not certain, we are never certain.

I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.