For everyone who, having no artistic sense-that is to say, no submission to subjective reality-may have the knack of reasoning about art till doomsday, especially if he be, in addition, a diplomat or financier in contact with the 'realities' of the present day, is only too ready to believe literature is an intellectual game which is destined to gradually be abandoned as time goes on.

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

The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.

The opinions which we hold of one another, our relations with friends and kinsfolk are in no sense permanent, save in appearance, but are as eternally fluid as the sea itself.

A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.

One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.

At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows; how small a thing her charm was for him now compared with the astounding terror that extended out from it like a murky halo, the immense anguish of not knowing at every moment what she had been doing, of not possessing her everywhere and always!