The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.

The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.

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

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

Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else's body.

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