There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.

Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is inexistent; but, if so, we feel that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, must be nothing either. We shall perish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will follow and share our fate. And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less probable.

A person does not...stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourself exposed on his surface...but is a shadow which we can never succeed in penetrating...a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love.

Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

Love is a reciprocal torture.

Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.