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.

Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe envelops just as frequently, when love is in question, the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had been brought to me by Gilberte's letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that any satisfaction we can give it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion of being healed.

The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes.

And so when studying faces, we do indeed measure them, but as painters, not as surveyors.

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.

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm.