Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

To retire to the monastery, or the woods, or the sea, is to escape from the sharp suggestions that spur on ambition.

The bashful are always aggressive at heart.

If love closes, the self contracts and hardens: the mind having nothing else to occupy its attention and give it that change and renewal it requires, busies itself more and more with self-feeling, which takes on narrow and disgusting forms, like avarice, arrogance and fatuity.

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.

It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.