A middling talent makes for a more serene life.

The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighbourhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement.

When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love.

Only lies and evil come from letting people off.

Food is a profound subject and one, incidentally, about which no writer lies.

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

Nothing is more maddening than being questioned by the object of one's interest about the object of hers, should that object not be you.