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.

Habit! that skillful but slow arranger, which starts out by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary state, but that thespirit is after all happy to discover, for without habit and reduced to its own resources, the spirit would be unable to make any lodgings seem habitable.

Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.

In reality, every reader is, while reading, the reader of his own self.

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

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