There is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a way is always present, it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again.

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read; that I prefer immediately to all the honors.

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

To achieve accurate knowledge of others, if such a thing were possible, we could only ever arrive at it through the slow and unsure recognition of our own initial optical inaccuracies. However, such knowledge is not possible: for, while our vision of others is being adjusted, they, who are not made of mere brute matter, are also changing; we think we have managed to see them more clearly, but they shift; and when we believe we have them fully in focus, it is merely our older images of them that we have clarified, but which are themselves already out of date.

There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.