Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for future desires.

Lies are essential to humanity.

Wars are fought for the benefit of oligarchs, triumphs bought with the blood of peons.

We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering.