Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins.

I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.

The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.