There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.

The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.

A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.

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.

After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.

An hour is not merely an hour, it is a vase full of scents and sounds and projects and climates.

There is probably not one person, however great his virtue, who cannot be led by the complexities of life's circumstances to a familiarity with the vices he condemns the most vehemently--without his completely recognizing this vice which, disguised as certain events, touches him and wounds him: strange words, an inexplicable attitude, on a given night, of the person whom he otherwise has so many reasons to love.