Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast

nothing is worth doing except what the world says is impossible.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

Music … creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.

What fire does not destroy, it hardens.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

The books that the world calls immoral books are books that show the world its own shame.

Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train.

One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.