My existence was beginning to cause me serious concern. Was I a mere figment of the imagination?
There is no need for hell fire in hell. Hell is other people.
It seems that the inevitable fate of man is never attain complete freedom: princes everywhere tend to despotism and the people to servitude.
When I hesitate, I do not paint. When I paint, I do not hesitate.
Being afraid is the worst sin there is.
Women over thirty are at their best, but men over thirty are too old to recognize it.
Charm is the ability to make others forget that you look as you do.
I may not be a pin-up, but I’m one hell of a boxer.
Die deutsche Sprache ist die Orgel unter den Sprachen.
The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow’s veil; the future, the virgin’s.
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.
To conform is to give in.
No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptuous, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt, too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.
You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other’s imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.
In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.
But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which pass in disorder, and then, sudden lightning like this one. Nothing has changed and yet everything is different. I can’t describe it, it’s like the Nausea and yet it’s just the opposite: at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits in the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.
People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.
It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn’t strike me. At heart, I am even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it, as if you called a clod of earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly.
It’s strange. I felt less lonely when I didn’t know you.
Something has happened to me, I can’t doubt it any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that’s all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and I was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it’s blossoming.