The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.

Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.

The only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.

Knowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands, but at leastin our thoughts where we may dispose of them at our whim, which gives us the illusion of power over them.