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

A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.

The only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.

However, the danger in [socially unbalanced relationships] is that the subjection of the woman temporarily calms the man's jealousy but also renders it more demanding. He ends up making his mistress live like those prisoners on whom light is shone day and night in order for them to be better watched. And things always end in tragedy.

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.

I was not at all worried about finding my doctor boring; I expected from him, thanks to an art of which the laws escaped me, that he pronounce concerning my health an indisputable oracle by consulting my entrails.