It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.

A rent in your clothes is a mishap, a stain on them is a vice.

Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other.

There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.