I hadn't understood how days could be both long and short at the same time: long to live through, maybe, but so drawn out that they ended up flowing into one another. They lost their names. Only 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still had any meaning for me.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

The Four Conditions of Happiness: Life in the open air, Love for another being,Freedom from ambition,Creation

Men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called "the act of love," or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality. We seldom find a mean between these two extremes.

He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.

What's natural is the microbe. All the rest-heath, integrity, purity (if you like)-is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.