Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.

One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.

The technique of a great seducer requires a facility and an indifference in passing from one object of affection to another which I could never have; however that may be, my loves have left me more often than I have left them, for I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved. The desire to count up exactly the riches which each new love brings us, and to see it change, and perhaps watch it grow old, accords ill with multiplicity of conquests.

Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.

I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.

the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.

I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography.