The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

Money pads the edges of things.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.

Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.