But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it.

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.

The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars.

Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!