The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality.

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

It is the fear of middle-age in the young, of old-age in the middle-aged, which is the prime cause of infidelity, that infallible rejuvenator.

Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.

If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.