People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.

No man is a complete mystery except to himself.

We believe we can change things according to our wishes because that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution; things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

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

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

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

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. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.