“You've always mistaken my absolute self-assurance for profound thought.”

“It was me, only me. Self-contained, self-reliant, and always, unquestionably self-assured.”

“You will always be my always", he assured me.”

“A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully.”

“There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.”

“Self-composed and self-assured ataraxy is giving ataxia a miss.”