I have only one thing to say to the melancholy man: 'Look into the distance.' ... When you look at the stars or the ocean's expanse, your eye is completely relaxed; once your eye is relaxed, your mind is unfettered.

There is a future that makes itself and a future we make. The real future is composed of both.

Wouldn't a sailor laugh at you if you told him that the whole crossing depends on the first turn of the helm?

It is not difficult to be unhappy or discontented; all you have to do is sit down, like a prince waiting to be amused. ... It is impossible to be happy if one does not have the desire to be happy; one must therefore will one's happiness, and create it.

People who are upset about something ruminate on it whenever they get a chance; they are constantly drawn back to their own unhappy tale as if it were a horror story left open on a table.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

As opposed to the incoherent spectacle of the world, the real is what is expected, what is obtained and what is discovered by our own movement. It is what is sensed as being within our own power and always responsive to our action.