Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.
Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.
Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.
Only fools don’t contradict themselves.
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.
The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy.
The color of truth is gray.
The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.