Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.

We belong to this earth. Now I can see the truth ... I love you on this earth of ours. Love me, do!

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.

I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.

When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning."

To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.