In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
Don't let them tell us stories. Don't let them say of the man sentenced to death "He is going to pay his debt to society," but: "They are going to cut off his head." It looks like nothing. But it does make a little difference. And then there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.
It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.
The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return.
Assert your right to your own time, and gather together and save the time which up till lately has been either taken from you or filched away or has simply passed by unused.