The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling.

Love isn't actually a feeling at all--it's an illness, a certain condition of body and soul.... Usually it takes possession of someone without his permission, all of a sudden, against his will--just like cholera or a fever.

All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.

I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.

I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.