What a profound significance small things assume when the woman we love conceals them from us.

For often I have wished to see a person again without realising that it was simply because that personal recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom, and I have been led to believe, and to make someone else believe, in a renewal of affection, by what was no more than an inclination to travel.

The stellar universe is not so difficult to understand as the real actions of other people, especially of the people with whom we are in love.

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

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.

It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions

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.