“You do not notice changes in what is always before you.”
“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”
“Girls usually have a paper mGchT face on their wedding day.”
“Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.”
“The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.”
“No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.”
“One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.”
“What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.”
“To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”
“And what a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised.”
“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 mechanism of friendship.”
“Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.”
“In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.”
“It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.”
“Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.”
“The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”
“January, month of empty pockets! Let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.”
“My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.”
“A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.”
“I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.”
“It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.”
“You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”
“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.”
“But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious.”
“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.”
“On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us --ah! what a dream, to live in that! --the other stifles us at the first breath.”
“The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.”
“Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shriveled innocence of an old maid?”
“It's nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time.”