One must work, if not from inclination, at least out of despair — since it proves, on close examination, that work is less boring than amusing oneself.

In this horror of solitude, this need to lose his ego in exterior flesh, which man calls grandly the need for love.

The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future.

True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.

A multitude of small delights constitute happiness

The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).

What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.