Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

When you take your belief for granted, failure takes you for rides.

Why do I go outside at one a.m.and search the stars as though I'd numbered them?

Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply.

The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

I wear my shadows where they're harder to see, but they follow me everywhere. I guess that should tell me I'm traveling toward light.

So you're quite right that when... as the Cold War grew and expanded out of Europe, we ourselves had to take refuge behind the shield of the Monroe Doctrine.

I'm not an impersonator. I'm a lousy impersonator, actually.

It's one of the greatest comforts of working in ministry: the unspoken certitude that your spouse did not marry you for your money.

As a person, I'm pretty much the same except that I've come to terms with who my real friends and supporters are. I don't get particularly friendly with new people at first go.