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In everything, almost in everything, I wrote I was guided by the need of collecting ideas which, linked together, would be the expression of myself, t...more

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To destroy the life that dwells in othersis beyond your power. The life of those you have slainhas vanished from your eyes, but is not destroyed. Yout...more

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The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolut...more

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Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.

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In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

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Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time...more

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it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

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All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

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I’ve never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets ...more

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But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of...more

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But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment.

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But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

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When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hosti...more

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There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

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In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had b...more