Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones.

Indeed, among the lesser auxiliaries to success in love, an absence, the declining of an invitation to dinner, an unintentional, unconscious harshness are of more service than all the cosmetics and fine clothes in the world.

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.

We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.

The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.