You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

All disgust is originally disgust at touching.

I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.

Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.

Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.