The only joy in the world is to begin.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest - thought, action - is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.

The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men's pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.

Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.

When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves