We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.

What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.

Man cannot bear his own portrait. The image of his limits and his own determinacy exasperates him, drives him mad.

Sometime I think; and sometime I am.

To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with oneself; that is to say, alone - but that is all it means.