We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.

At the heart of our friendly or purely social relations, there lurks a hostility momentarily cured but recurring by fits and starts.

How can we have the courage to wish to live, how can we make a movement to preserve ourselves from death, in a world where love is provoked by a lie and consists solely in the need of having our sufferings appeased by whatever being has made us suffer?

There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.