We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

There are people whose society I find delicious; but when I sit alone and think of them I shudder.

Money and sex are forces too unruly for our reason; they can only be controlled by taboos with which we tamper at our peril.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.

There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.

If we shake hands with icy fingers, it is because we have burnt them so horribly before.

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.