I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

My past is everything I failed to be.

If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.

Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!

To have opinions is to sell out to yourself. To have no opinion is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.

With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe they’re happy.

From so much self-revising, I’ve destroyed myself. From so much self-thinking, I’m now my thoughts and not I

At the end of this day there remains what remained yesterday and what will remain tomorrow: the insatiable, unquantifiable longing to be both the same and other.

Sickness occurs when we desire what we need and what’s desirable with equal intensity, suffering our lack of perfection as if we were suffering for lack of bread.

...if George Washington founded the nation, John Marshall defined it.

I have been committed to carrying out my duties... in accordance with both the letter and spirit of all applicable rules of ethics and canons of conduct.

Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world... Kindness can change the lives of people.

When you're 20, we all make stupid and impulsive decisions.

We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.

What worries me is that now, communication is virtual.

...you shouldn't hate something you don't know, because it may turn out to be the bearer of your greatest good fortune.

My future will be better than my past.

Dialogue works the least well when it's telling you what's going on.

Nature does require her times of preservation.