The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty.

What seems different in yourself; that's the rare thing you possess. The one thing that gives each of us his worth, and that's just what we try to suppress. And we claim to love life.

The world will be saved by one or two people.

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.

Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

The individual person is more interesting than people in general; he and not they is the one whom God created in His image.

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.