We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.
A middling talent makes for a more serene life.
Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.
Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair.
Remember that the secret of all learning is patience and that curiosity is not the same thing as a thirst for knowledge.
Food is a profound subject and one, incidentally, about which no writer lies.
Only love has clear vision. Hatred has cloudy vision. When we hate we know not what we do.
There is no triumph of good, and if there were it would not be a triumph of good.
All our failures are ultimately failures in love.
Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child’s despair.
I am not famous for anything in particular. I am just famous.
Art is not cozy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing.
To be a complete victim may be another source of power.
There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life’s bright mysterious expectations.
Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.
Oh the piercing sadness of life in the midst of its ordinariness!
Mathematics is good for the soul, getting things right enlivens a sense of truth, efforts to understand automatically purify desires.
Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding.
Language is a machine for making falsehoods.
He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.