I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.

All happiness is a form of innocence.

All happiness is a work of art: the smallest error falsifies it, the slightest hesitation alters it, the least heaviness spoils it, the slightest stupidity brutalizes it.

Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily