“Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.”
“Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.”
“We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.”
“Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.”
“It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.”
“Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.”
“Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.”
“For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.”
“Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.”
“Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.”
“Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.”
“To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”
“He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature, is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.”
“Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.”
“Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.”
“The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.”
“In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past -- a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.”
“Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.”
“Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.”
“Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults --a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.”
“Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”
“Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary -- they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.”
“It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.”
“Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.”
“What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.”
“Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.”
“The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.”
“The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists -- in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.”
“Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.”
“Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.”