I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports.... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.

After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.

Talent is long patience.

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.

What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!

That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.