The loss of a sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition.

The thirst for something other than what we have…to bring something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when our sensibility, which happiness has silenced like an idle harp, wants to resonate under some hand, even a rough one, and even if it might be broken by it.

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

They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.

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.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.