Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

There is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a way is always present, it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again.

Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.

Masterpieces are no more than the shipwrecked flotsam of great minds.

I do my intellectual work inside myself, and once I am with my fellow creatures it is more or less a matter of indifference to me whether or not they are intelligent as long as they are kind, sincere, etc.

To a great extent, suffering is a sort of need felt by the organism to make itself familiar with a new state, which makes it uneasy, to adapt its sensibility to that state.

The one thing more difficult than following a regime is keeping from imposing it on others.