I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.

February 13, 1936
I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary. But what a mistake and what despair. And myself perhaps...

Seek contacts. All contacts. If I want to write about men, should I stop talking about the countryside? If the sky or light attract me, shall I forget the eyes or voices of those I love? Each time I am given the elements of a friendship, the fragments of an emotion, never the emotion or the friendship itself.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.