After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensées in an advertisement for soap.

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.

Memory nourishes the heart, and grief abates.

Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.

The past not merely is not fugitive, it remains present.

What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.

Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.