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

The only paradise is paradise lost.

One reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one s mistress.

That which we remember of our conduct is ignored by our closest neighbour; but that which we have forgotten having said, or even what we never said, will cause laughter even into the next world.

No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived as those that we had regarded as not being lived at all: days spent wholly with a favourite book. Everything that seemed to fill them full for others we pushed aside, because it stood between us and the pleasures of the Gods.

Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.

But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand.