People who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be unhappy about a person who is worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.

The true voyage of discovery is not a journey to a new place; it is learning to see with new eyes.

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.

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

At a certain age, we have already been struck by love; it no longer develops alone, according to its own mysteries and fateful laws while our hearts stand by startled and passive. We come to its assistanceRecognizing one of its symptoms, we recall, we bring back to life the others. Since we possess its song engraved in its totality within us, we do not need for a woman to tell us the beginning--filled with admiration inspired by beauty--to find the continuation.

We must love men more than things, and I admire and weep more for the soldiers than for the churches which were only the recording of an heroic gesture which today is reenacted at every moment.