The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years time.

As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious.

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

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.

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