Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.

Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

For one cannot change, that is to say become another person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one no longer is.