If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.

For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.

My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.

Keep your own secret, and get out other people's.

Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.

How can you expect another to keep a secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden

He that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide.

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

I think we keep the secrets from ourselves. Because we have experienced a moment when you look into a person’s eyes and you see that how they are looking at you is dehumanising. In that moment, all your humanity is lost. And it’s unbearable. We keep that secret from our daughters, because we don’t want them to be seen in that way.

Hide yourself well; cleanse well.

Never reveal all of yourself to other people; hold back something in reserve so that people are never quite sure if they really know you.

I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.

Comment prétendons-nous qu'un autre puisse garder notre secret, si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-mêmes?