Autumn Leaves

SELECTED QUOTES

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves — in finding themselves.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself — and thus make yourself indispensable.

Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.

The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.

It is now, and in this world, that we must live.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labor of peace.

There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, “It all depends on me.”

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Dare to be yourself.

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.

At times it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

The color of truth is grey.

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.

The scholar seeks, the artist finds.

Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?

A work of art is an exaggeration.

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

Our judgments about things vary according to the time left us to live — that we think is left us to live.

To win one’s joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.

Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.

One completely overcomes only what one assimilates.

What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

To what a degree the same past can leave different marks — and especially admit of different interpretations.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.

The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations.

Only fools don’t contradict themselves.

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you.

Please do not understand me too quickly.

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands upon others.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one’s heart for so long as that?…And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?

Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.

Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It’s their way of falling.

The most decisive actions of our life — I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future — are, more often than not, unconsidered.

My soul was born covered with wrinkles — wrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.

Understanding is the beginning of approving.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow’s joy is possible only if today’s makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.