Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.

According to a charming law of nature which is evident even in the most sophisticated societies, we live in complete ignorance of whatever we love.

The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.

Masterpieces are no more than the shipwrecked flotsam of great minds.

We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.

For one cannot change, that is to say become another person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one no longer is.

Physical love, so unjustly decried, forces everyone to manifest even the smallest bits of kindness he possesses, of selflessness,that they shine in the eyes of all who surround him.