Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.

Life deceives everyone except the individual who doesn't contemplate it, the individual who demands nothing from it, the individual who serenely accepts its few gifts and serenely makes the most of them.

It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.

Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.

Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we're absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.

I'm incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn't want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I'd never experienced it.