The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one’s own loneliness, how to communicate with others.
To know the world, one must construct it.
The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can’t deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.
What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.
Here’s the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.
No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern.
The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire.
The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.
Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man.
There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children .
A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.
Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.
It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.
The real affliction of old age is remorse.
I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else’s understanding.
There is something indecent in words .
Not believing in anything is also a religion .
I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.
In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.