You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death

Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation.

If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth, one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become.

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.

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.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.