Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read; that I prefer immediately to all the honors.

It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.

There is no doubt that a person's charms are less frequently a cause of love than a remark such as: 'No, this evening I shan't be free'.

Are not the thoughts of the dying often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, visceral aspect, towards the "seamy side" of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, and which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?

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

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.