The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct ratio to the swiftness of our passage.

The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

To a great extent, suffering is a sort of need felt by the organism to make itself familiar with a new state, which makes it uneasy, to adapt its sensibility to that state.

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist on the moon.

The stellar universe is not so difficult to understand as the real actions of other people, especially of the people with whom we are in love.

There is probably not one person, however great his virtue, who cannot be led by the complexities of life's circumstances to a familiarity with the vices he condemns the most vehemently--without his completely recognizing this vice which, disguised as certain events, touches him and wounds him: strange words, an inexplicable attitude, on a given night, of the person whom he otherwise has so many reasons to love.