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

Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

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

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

We never remember days, only moments.

There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.