The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors.

At the heart of our friendly or purely social relations, there lurks a hostility momentarily cured but recurring by fits and starts.

We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.

It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since, as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad.

...the nose is generally the organ in which stupidity is most readily displayed.

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us past it, and then if we turn round to gaze at the remote past, we can barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.

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