Love is an incurable malady like those pathetic states in which rheumatism affords the sufferer a brief respite only to be replaced by epileptiform headaches.

Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted -- atrocious.

Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.

Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.

We love only what we do not wholly possess.