De geschiedenis van een mensenziel , zelfs van de allergeringste, is haast belangwekkender en leerrijker dan de geschiedenis van een geheel volk, vooral wanneer zij het resultaat is van een heldere geest, en wanneer zij...

We practically always excuse things when we understand them

I was modest–they accused me of being crafty: I became secretive. I felt deeply good and evil–nobody caressed me, everybody offended me: I became rancorous. I was gloomy–other children were merry and talkative. I felt...

No good ever becomes of a man who forgets an old friend

I must have had some high object in life, for I feel unbounded strength within me. But I never discovered it and was carried away by the allurements of empty, un-rewarding passions. I was tempered...

I am not capable of true friendship. One of the two friends is always the slave of the other, although, often, neither of the two admits this to himself.

He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace

I felt somehow happy to be so high above the world – a childish feeling, I grant, but we can’t help becoming children as we leave social conventions behind and come nearer to nature. All...

Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.

A childish feeling, I admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes...

The story of a man’s soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation

A strange thing, the human heart in general, and woman’s heart in particular.

I’ve an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers. I am no...

I have observed that there always exists some strange relationship between the appearance of a man and his soul, as if with the loss of a limb, the soul lost one of its senses.