Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the other actors for a moment, making herself inconspicuous, not wanting anyone to pay attention to her.

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct ratio to the swiftness of our passage.

After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensées in an advertisement for soap.

Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages.