It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life.

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring.

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us

By the time a philospher answers a question weve usually forgotten what was asked.

At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles. Wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.