"The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies."

"La difficoltà di commettere suicidio sta in questo: è un atto di ambizione che si può commettere solo quando si sia superata ogni ambizione."

"Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?"

"A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience."

"Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it."

"Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman."

"To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it."

"No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide."

"When one has made a mistake, one says. "Another time I shall know what to do," when one should say is: "I already know what I shall really do another time.""

"Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i.e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism."

"The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's."

"Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose."

"All our "most sacred affections" are merely prosaic habit."

"Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life. Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone."

"The thing most feared in secret always happens. I write: oh Thou, have mercy. And then? All it takes is a little courage. The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes. It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It takes humility, not pride. All this is sickening. Not words. An act. I won't write any more."

"Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism."

"Nothing can be added to the rest, to the past. We always begin afresh. One nail drives out another. But four nails make a cross."

"The act—the act—must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark."

"The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess."

"It is not that things happen to each of us according to his fate, but that he interprets what has happened, if he has power to do so, according to his sense of his own destiny."

"The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away."

"We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest."

"There is only one pleasure—that of being alive. All the rest is misery."

"Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible."

"Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd."

"There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man."

"Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live."

"How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?"

"We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it."

"There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children."

"The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten."

"In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational (blood and sex)."

"Narrating incredible things as though they were real—old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible—the new."

"When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end."

"The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire."

"There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him."

"Love is desire for knowledge."

"In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid."

"Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time."

"When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her."

"No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him."

"A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself."

"We obtain things when we no longer want them."

"Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed."

"Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own."

"There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first."

"The really clever thing, in affairs of this sort, is not to win a woman already desired by everyone, but to discover such a prize while she is still unknown."

"A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work."

"Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace."