To become young again would seem to me an appalling prospect. Youth is a kind of delirium, which can be cured, if it is ever cured at all, by years of painful treatment.

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection -even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano -is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

Eat with the rich, but go to the play with the poor, who are capable of joy.

Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.

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

If they lost the incredible conviction that they can change their wives or husbands, marriage would collapse at once.

I can't forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.