“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

“We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we yearn for another that will be eternal.”

“Within every one of us there lives both a Don Quixote and aSancho Panza to whom we hearken by turns; and though Sanchomost persuades us, it is Don Quixote that we find ourselves obligedto admire...”

“Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.”

“If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.”

“You see, Dimitri and I, we are both suffering from ennui! We have still the match-boxes. But at last one gets tired even of match-boxes. Besides, our collection will soon be complete. And then what are we going to do?"'Oh, Madame!' I exclaimed, touched by the moral unhappiness of this pretty person, 'if you only had a son, then you would know what to do. You would then learn the purpose of your life, and your thoughts would become at once more serious and yet more cheerful.''But I have a son,' she replied. 'He is a big boy; he is eleven years old, and he suffers from ennui like the rest of us. Yes, my George has ennui, too; he is tired of everything. It is very wretched.”

“We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.”