The only paradise is paradise lost.
No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.
Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.
It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life.
In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.
If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.
Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.
Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.