Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

My dear Madame, I just noticed that I forgot my cane at your house yesterday; please be good enough to give it to the bearer of this letter. P.S. Kindly pardon me for disturbing you; I just found my cane.

...Hard people are weak people whom nobody wants, and the strong, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have alone that meekness which the common herd mistake for weakness.

A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

I believe that all true art is classic, but the dictates of the mind rarely permit of its being recognized as such when it first appears.

Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the other actors for a moment, making herself inconspicuous, not wanting anyone to pay attention to her.