“To lose one parent, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.

I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.

I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.

Oh darling, if the universe would need the love of us careless humans to keep its restless heart alive the sky would be full of dead stars.

I walked into my own book, seeking peace. It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.