There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.
The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.
Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.
We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body.
Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.
Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones.