Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.

All happiness is a form of innocence.

The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.

Sickness disgusts us with death, and we wish to get well, which is a way of wishing to live. But weakness and suffering, with manifold bodily woes, soon discourage the invalid from trying to regain ground: he tires of those respites which are but snares, of that faltering strength, those ardors cut short, and that perpetual lying in wait for the next attack.

If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie