all things literature

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.

You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

When the end comes, there will be important things to say, for sure. But there will also be that last laugh, and you will want it.

There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjuncted and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs.

To dare; that is the price of progress.

You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.

Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.

The pun is the clown among jokes, the well turned paradox is the polished comedian, and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy, just as the keenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour.

The beautiful is as useful as the useful.

The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake - let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self.

There is the sudden. There is the eventual. And in between, there is the living.

[...] life is sometimes just another day, and sometimes it’s moment after moment after moment that only paralyzes you if you let it.

Progress is not accomplished in one stage.

To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one’s self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to insult drunken victory, to hold one’s position, to stand one’s ground; that is the example which nations need, that is the light which electrifies them.

The counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future.

From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race.