Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain.

In moments of despair, we look on ourselves lead-enly as objects; we see ourselves, our lives, as someone else might see them and may even be driven to kill ourselves if the separation, the "knowledge," seems sufficiently final.

Any sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has all too much a professional air.