Adultery breathes new life into marriages which have been left for dead.

It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions

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

She was "a woman of uncertain age.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."

There is in this world in which everything wears out, everything perishes, one thing that crumbles into dust, that destroys itself still more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself than Beauty: namely Grief.