Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.

An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortunes

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.

One completely overcomes only what one assimilates.

Solitude is bearable only with God.