Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death

Humanity cherishes its swaddling clothes; but it shall not grow up unless it can free itself from them. Turning down his mother's breast does not make the weaned child ungrateful. ... Rise up naked, valiant; make the sheaths crack; push aside the stakes; to grow straight you need no more than the thrust of your sap and the call of the sun.

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable.

Too chaste an adolescence makes for a dissolute old age. It is doubtless easier to give up something one has known than something one imagines.

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.

The itch is a mean, unconfessable, ridiculous malady; one can pity someone who is suffering ; someone who wants to scratch himself makes one laugh.