Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.

I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography.

We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.

Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings.

I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.

age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.

For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.