No man is a complete mystery except to himself.

We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap.

... we made much less happy by the kindness of a great writer, which strictly speaking we find only in his books, than we suffer from the hostility of a woman whom we have not chosen for her intelligence, but whom we cannot stop ourselves from loving.

How paradoxical it is to search reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory.

Everybody calls "clear" those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own.

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

Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.