Not everyone can be an orphan.

True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.

One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.

Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.