For women who do not love us, as for the "disappeared", knowing that we no longer have any hope does not prevent us form continuing to wait. We live on our guard, on watch; women whose son has gone asea on a dangerous exploration imagine at any minute, although it has long been certain that he has perished, that he will enter, miraculously saved, and healthy.

Desire makes everything blossom

It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty.

People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are.

Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we posess them.

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 loss of a sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition.