I believe that in every circumstance I have been able to see rather clearly the most advantageous course I could follow, which is very rarely the one I did follow.

Nothing blocks happiness like happiness remembered.

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them.

True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.

With each book you write you should lose the admirers you gained with the previous one.

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.