To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

Do not think your truth can be found by anyone else.

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.

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.

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.