In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
The formula ‘Two and two make five’ is not without its attractions.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another.
Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself.
Hell is the inability to love.
The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.
Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him.
My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
Humanity can live without science, it can live without bread, but it cannot live without beauty. Without beauty, there would be nothing left to do in this life. Here the secret lies. Here lies the entire story.
I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.
One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.