The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.

And so when studying faces, we do indeed measure them, but as painters, not as surveyors.

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.

But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowing it, and our supposedly lying words foreshadow an imminent reality.

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

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.