Respectable people... What bastards!

Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.

They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.