I've long stopped worrying about who invented whom - God man or man God.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

The most offensive is not their lying - one can always forgive lying - lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth - what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.

You will find what you are looking for when you realize God has placed those longings in your heart as a divine desire

She was alive. She was alive, and she had found her power — or it had found her.Tomorrow’s problems she’d take care of tomorrow.

No matter where you live, live with dignity.

Dying is more terrifying than actual death.

Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.

One should guard against believing the great masses to be more stupid than they actually are.

When you're a mom, you learn about fear. You're always afraid. Always. About everything from cupboard doors to kidnappers to weather.

True, this world of ours is full of hatred and disbelief, but that is no reason why we should not love and why we should not believe. We must love and believe in order to empty the hatred-sea.

Emotion did not play a part in truth, only reality did.

For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!").