Memory nourishes the heart, and grief abates.

Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.

The great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world.

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.

For, just as in the beginning it is formed by desire, so afterwards love is kept in existence only by painful anxiety.

Adultery breathes new life into marriages which have been left for dead.

A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has the ticket that shows its price.