Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.
It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways.
It is a singular characteristic of love that we cannot hide it where it exists, or pretend it where it does not exist.
To be too dissatisfied with ourselves is a weakness. To be too satisfied with ourselves is a stupidity.
There are people so blind and self-absorbed in all matters that they always believe that, whatever they desire or think, they can impose their will on other people. Whatever bad reason they use to persuade others, these self-centered people are so caught up in the process that it seems to them all they have to do is to speak their wishes in a lofty and commanding tone of voice in order to convince everybody.
There is a certain hidden mediocrity in those who are stationed above us in life, an ability to take liberties in their pursuit of pleasures and diversions, without injuring the honor and respect we owe to them.
There is as much wisdom in soliciting good counsel as in giving it. The most sensible people are not reluctant to consider the feelings of other people; and to know how to submit to the wise guidance of others is a kind of wisdom in itself.
For me, the constitutive element of an affair is the secrecy. It is the secrecy that leads to the lying, to the deception, to the duplicity. It is the structure of an affair - not the sexual or emotional behavior or what people actually are doing.
Stress is the reason for crime and all other kinds of frustration. To relieve it will eliminate everything else.
A man who keeps a diary pays, Due toll to many tedious days; But life becomes eventfulthen, His busy hand forgets the pen. Most books, indeed, are records less Of fulness than of emptiness.
Watching something being constructed, whether you're passing a building site or whether you're watching an artist at work, is fascinating, and I think that's the enjoyment.