We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

In reality, every reader is, while reading, the reader of his own self.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far.

A collection of bad love songs, tattered from overuse, has to touch us like a cemetery or a village. So what if the houses have no style, if the graves are vanishing under tasteless ornaments and inscriptions? Before an imagination sympathetic and respectful enough to conceal momentarily its aesthetic disdain, that dust may release a flock of souls, their beaks holding the still verdant dreams that gave them an inkling of the next world and let them rejoice or weep in this world.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.