The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

In politics, the pen is at its heaviest because it is weighed down by the collective responsibility it holds towards its people and their future in the eyes of the world.

...with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.

[denial] is an attempt to bring order to our lives.

From a timid shy girl I had become a woman of resolute character, who could no longer be frightened by the struggle with troubles.

For am I now trying to win the favor of people, or God? Or am I striving to please people?

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

Even in my bravest moment, I am a coward.

There is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it.

Many people think they have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia.