“There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.”

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.

Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.

Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.

Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.

There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine.

Is suffering so very serious? …I’m referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It’s extremely painful… hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain… is no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.

What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

Pink and white wine drunk at the same time is merely an illusion time.

This is a poem about love its absence is merely an optical illusion.

Life is a lonely journey. We expect and even believe that someone will always be there for us, but that illusion fades away with age and time.

City light appears as stars on the ground, but creates an illusion, of an ideal city that never existed, hides the dark & dusty secrets.

It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality.

Tied to worldly illusions, our sight is but a painted vision.

Fear not the devil’s darkness which you thought of as moonlight, Fear not, the waves knotted within your heart, which crashes onto your eyes waterline, there? Yes there! In that illusion exists you.

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory.