We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

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.

The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

By giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men.

Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.3