Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation.

Several sorts of memory exist in us; body and mind each possesses one peculiar to itself. Nostalgia, for instance, is a malady of the physical memory.

One hour of love has a whole life in it.

What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.

Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.

For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?