A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud.

It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.

Habit is stronger than reason.

Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

I feel so much the continual death of everything and everybody, and have so learned to reconcile myself to it, that the final and official end loses most of its impressiveness.

In this world we must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend that we have nothing to express; the choice lies between a mask and a figleaf.