I am on your side. But you have no way of knowing it, because your heart is blind

One must imagine Sisyphus happy

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better

I rebel; therefore I exist.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep

Don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God

Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them

I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness

I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler

You have to be there, even when you are not there

To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.

Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die

To create today is to create dangerously

I used to advertise my loyalty and I don’t believe there is a single person I loved that I didn’t eventually betray

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity

To understand the world, one must not be worrying about one’s self.

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and die

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself

Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means

To learn that the world, though governed by eternal laws, has yet managed to surprise us

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life

When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tear

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Learning is rebellion against tyrants; it is an act of liberty

But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love

Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

Live to the point of tears

Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship – never

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one love

To learn is to endure.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is

I know of only one dut

The only way to deal with this life is to find a way to laugh at it

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion

There is no love of life without despair of life

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead Walk beside me… just be my friend

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway