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.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality.

Wars are fought for the benefit of oligarchs, triumphs bought with the blood of peons.

You can't learn the truth about a man's intentions by asking him.

A fashionable milieu is one in which everybody's opinion is made up of the opinion of all the others. Has everybody a different opinion? Then it is a literary milieu.

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.