-
Nothing can match the treasure of common memories.
-
The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen.
-
I was too young to know how to love her.
-
Once we are bound together to our brothers by a common good that is outside us, then we can breathe. Experience teaches us that love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak.
-
Real love begins where nothing is expected in return.
-
It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity.
-
You know... when you are sad you love the sunsets.
-
On a day of burial there is no perspective--for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was--to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.
-
My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
-
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them in particular caused by what we compare it to: something worse and we feel grateful for what we have; something better and we feel somehow let down.
-
You become responsible for a long time for what you've tamed.
-
You're beautiful, but you're empty...One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose.
-
To live is to be slowly born.
-
Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.
-
There is no hope of joy except in human relations.
-
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.
-
It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others.
-
If a sheep eats bushes does it eat flowers too? a sheep eats whatever it finds even a flower with thorn? even a flower with thorns. then what's the good of thorns?
-
Straight ahead you can't go very far.
-
The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.
-
We are prudent people. We are afraid to let go of our petty reality in order to grasp at a great shadow.
-
One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields - even to sadness.
-
A man's age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man's age represents a fine cargo of experience and memories.
-
The wind in the grain is the caress to the spouse; it is the hand of peace stroking her hair.