An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

The laws of nature may be operative up to a certain limit, beyond which they turn against themselves to give birth to the absurd.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.

The only deep emotion I occasionally felt in these affairs was gratitude, when all was going well and I was left, not only peace, but freedom to come and go--never kinder and gayer with one woman than when I had just left another's bed, as if I extended to all others the debt I had just contracted toward one of them.

What, in fact, is a novel but a universe in which action is endowed with form, where final words are pronounced, where people possess one another completely, and where life assumes the aspect of destiny?