“For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving.”

“There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.”

“When one has once had the good luck to love intensely, life is spent in trying to recapture that ardor and that illumination. Forsakingbeauty and the sensual happiness attached to it, exclusively servingmisfortune, calls for a nobility I lack. But, after all, nothing is true that forces one to exclude.”

“There was a time when I didn’t at any minute have the slightest idea how I could reach the next one. Yes, one can wage war in this world, ape love, torture one’s fellow man, or merely say evil of one’s neighbour while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.”

“On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”

“Happiness is often only a pity for one's own misfortune.”

“luck is not to be coerced.”