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.

In painting, you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no-one can deal with it.

We love because we love.

The national budget is not a safe-deposit box. It is a spray can.

Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God

Yes, I can understand that a man might go to a gambling table when he sees that all that lies between him and death is his last crown.

Life in clubs is no paltry sign of the times we live in. Here gentlemen gamble with others whom they would not dream of inviting to their homes.