Life and Existence

No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else.

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies, and soon their places will know them no more, and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to “keep” by force of inertia.

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies, and soon their places will know them no more, and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to “keep” by force of inertia.

The true wisdom is to always be seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

To say that man is made up of strength and weakness, of insight and blindness, of pettiness and grandeur, is not to draw up an indictment against him: it is to define him.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Be not a slave of your own past.

Be not a slave of your own past.

Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Though men pride themselves on their great actions, often they are not the result of any great design, but of chance.

The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.

If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral.

If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral.

Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you. This before all: ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: must I write?