"Thus it was not long before I began to see the world as long-voyage sailors must always have seen it."

"Sheer misery makes one profound. — But here there are no problems, mere existence needs no justification, thinking becomes a game."

"I lie and gaze into the evening skv. which for hours has been slowly covering itself with small, silent, tangled clouds."

"There is a kind of rainy weather that is refreshing and cheerful. Today's weather is not."

"I wake before dawn, and then, much as I desire sleep, I cannot have it. I am now the prey of anything but sleep, anything real or unreal...

" "- Last night after dinner, when we were in the garden, I said,"I want to be alone for a whole summer, and get to the very dregs of life."

"What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days."

"For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment."

"Once upon a time, or rather at the very birth of time, .. Man claimed that he, too, was in some sort a deity."

"On his way home from the high school, Pyotr Demyanitch went into a general shop and bought a mouse-trap for fifteen kopecks."

"However dreames may bee fallacious concerning outward events, yet may they bee truly significant at home..."

"Tranquillity ! thou better name ⁠Than all the family of Fame !"

"To please in Conversation is an Art which all People believe they understand and practise, tho’ most are ignorant or deficient in it."

"I long to make wisdom current coin, that is to say to stamp it into maxims, proverbs, sentences, easy to retain, and to hand on."

"Now, this October you will turn a hundred, harrowing friend. May I speak to you ? I’m alone..."

"AN OLD MAN named Chunglang, which means ‘Master Rock’, owned a small farm in the mountains."

"Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror..."

"In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child."

"« Assez ! » me disais-je à moi-même, en gravissant péniblement le flanc d'une montagne escarpée..."

"Je m’étais trouvé, à l’étranger, dans maintes nuits obscures, mais jamais dans une nuit plus obscure."

« “No man is an island,” said John Donne. I feel we are all islands — in a common sea. »

"Maïa ! Is she indeed the true goddess ? Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma."

"I was about to light a cigarette, the cigarette of satisfaction, when, at that very moment, a laugh burst out behind me."

"S. Augustine. : You are the victim of a terrible plague of the soul — melancholy ; which the moderns call accidie..."