Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia, - let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores!

Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights; as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful--but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away.

When we cannot stand certain people, we try to have suspicions about them.

Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

A vocation makes us unthinking; that is its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark behind which we are permitted to withdraw whencommonplace doubts and cares assail us.