My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.

Never buy a thing you don't want merely because it is dear.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.

What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.

Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression.