He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes

Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy.

And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely.

Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, "Take it. This is my life.

To put it in a nutshell, he was afflicted with a love of literature. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality.