Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger.
"Let the dead bury the dead." There is not a single word of Christ to which the Christian religion has paid less attention.
Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.
To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.
The anxiety we have for the figure we cut, for our personage, is constantly cropping out. We are showing off and are often more concerned with making a display than with living. Whoever feels observed observes himself.
Don't think that your truth could be found by someone else.
I would like the events never to be told directly by the author, but rather to be introduced (and several times, from various angles) by those among the characters on whom they will have had any effect. I would like those events, in the account they will make of them, to appear slightly distorted; a kind of interest stems, for the reader, from the simple fact that he should need to restore. The story requires his collaboration in order to properly take shape.
If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth, one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become.
If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.
No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.
The young people who come to me in the hope of hearing me utter a few memorable maxims are quite disappointed. Aphorisms are not my forte, I say nothing but banalities.... I listen to them and they go away delighted.
I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts.
The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.
Man's first and greatest victory must be won against the gods.
Other people's appetites easily appear excessive when one doesn't share them.
I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.
Though a revolution may call itself "national," it always marks the victory of a single party.
He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands on others.
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death
I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.
Each thought becomes an anxiety in my brain. I am becoming the ugliest of all things: a busy man.
Nothing is good for everyone, but only relatively to some people.
There is a law in life: When one door closes to us another one opens.
The truth is, I hoped the cure would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him -- I could hit on nothing that wasn't charming. It's wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating.
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