I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself.

[On travel:] Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison?

Any truth creates a scandal.

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.

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

Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey.

The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.