I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.

A Darwinian nation of economic fitness abhors idleness, dependence, non-productivity.

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets.

We always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it.

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.

... to adapt one's outlook to another person's salvation is the surest and quickest way of losing him.