What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.

A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.

It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air.

Hope is a risk that must be run.

Suicide only really frightens those who are never tempted by it and never will be, for its darkness only welcomes those who are predestined to it.

Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.

...the most dangerous shortsightedness consists in underestimating the mediocre.

You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.

Mave believed that not being able to see your life clearly, to scrutinize it intelligently, meant that probably you were at the dead center of it, and that couldn't possibly be a bad thing.

Even manifestly senseless suffering and death can have a meaning, can acquire a meaning. a hidden meaning.

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.

Intimacy makes you feel unique. Intimacy makes you feel as though you have been singled out, that someone in the world believes you have special qualities that nobody else has.

If something's bound to happen, it will happen.. Right time, right person, and for the best reason.

Speak up when you're supposed to, as opposed to trying to write prescriptions for the way people should live.

I cannot comprehend how any man can want anything but the truth.

Love is the only endeavor in which knowing what you're doing is no help at all.

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

People like change in general, but not in particular.