That abominable and sensual act called reading the newspaper, thanks to which all the misfortunes and cataclysms in the universe over the last twenty-four hours, the battles which cost the lives of fifty-thousand men, the murders, the strikes, the bankruptcies, the fires, the poisonings, the suicides, the divorces, the cruel emotions of statesmen and actors, are transformed for us, who don't even care, into a morning treat, blending in wonderfully, in a particularly exciting and tonic way, with the recommended ingestion of a few sips of cafe au lait.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.

Instead of seeking new landscapes, develop new eyes.

One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy.

Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.

Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much.

... in love, barriers cannot be destroyed from the outside by the one to whom the cause despair, no matter what he does; and it isonly when he is no longer concerned with them that, suddenly, as a result of work coming from elsewhere, accomplished within the one who did not love him, these barriers, formerly attacked without success, fall futilely.