Most people who have been done a favor consider it an opportunity to show their incorruptibility rather than their gratitude. This is not only considerably cheaper morally, but it sometimes increases their pride so much that pretty soon they look down on their benefactor.

You never so much want to be happy with a woman as when you know that you're ceasing to care for her.

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

To be ready is one thing, to be able to wait is another; but to seize the right moment is everything.

I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?

Oh, we do not understand death, we never understand it; creatures are only truly dead when everyone else has died who knew them.

No specter assails us in more varied disguises than loneliness, and one of its most impenetrable masks is called love.