82 quotes
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
This Business of Living (1935)
We obtain things when we no longer want them.
This Business of Living (1935)
When one has made a mistake, one says. "Another time I shall know what to do," when one should say is: "I already know what I shall really do another time."
This Business of Living (1935)
We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.
This Business of Living (1935)
Things which cost nothing are those which cost the most. Why? Because they cost us the effort of understanding that they are free.
This Business of Living (1935)
The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.
This Business of Living (1935)
Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.
This Business of Living (1935)
Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?
This Business of Living (1935)
Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i.e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism.
This Business of Living (1935)
The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment. When this sensation is lacking—as when one is in prison, or ill, or stupid, or when living has become a habit—one might as well be dead.
This Business of Living (1935)
It is not that things happen to each of us according to his fate, but that he interprets what has happened, if he has power to do so, according to his sense of his own destiny.
This Business of Living (1935)
Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life.
Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone.
This Business of Living (1935)
If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more?
No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight—they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.
This Business of Living (1935)
A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.
This Business of Living (1935)
Nothing can be added to the rest, to the past. We always begin afresh.
One nail drives out another. But four nails make a cross.
This Business of Living (1935)
It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point.
This Business of Living (1935)
Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.
This Business of Living (1935)
In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life.
The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.
This Business of Living (1935)
A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.
This Business of Living (1935)
The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.
This Business of Living (1935)