Borrowed illusions are better than none.
a self-made martyr is a poor thing.
But youth isn't happy. Youth is sadder than age.
The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.
No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it for example by seeing it how it could be worse and then being grateful it isn't.
No one in the modern world is more lonely than the writer with a literary conscience.