Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.

Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.

The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.

When people don't have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.

If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.