The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them its fragile grace.

There are people whose faces assume an unaccustomed beauty and majesty the moment they cease to look out of their eyes.

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.

Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we posess them.

Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals.

Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.

How can we have the courage to wish to live, how can we make a movement to preserve ourselves from death, in a world where love is provoked by a lie and consists solely in the need of having our sufferings appeased by whatever being has made us suffer?