Of all our games, love’s play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul…
This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
Tout bonheur est un chef-d’oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hésitation l’altère, la moindre lourder le dépare, la moindre sottise l’abêtit.
Le souvenir n’est qu’un regard posé de temps en temps sur des êtres devenus intérieurs,mais qui ne dépendent pas de la mémoire pour continuer d’exister.
Happiness is a masterpiece: the slightest error compromises it, the slightest hesitation undermines it, the slightest excess corrupts it, the slightest vulgarity defiles it.
The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.
Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
Attianus had been right in his conjectures: the virgin gold of respect would be too soft without some alloy of fear.
Of all our games, love’s play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body’s ecstasy.
I was willing to yield to nostalgia, that melancholy residue of desire.
It displeases me to have some creature think that he can foresee and profit from my desire, automatically adapting himself to what he supposes to be my taste.
All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres.
A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists. If death does take him, he is probably unaware of the fact; it amounts to no more for him than a shock or a spasm.
Overhead shone the great star of the constellation of Lyra, destined to be the polar star for men who will live tens of thousands of years after we have ceased to be.
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when the presume to anticipate custom.
Any law too often subject to infraction is bad; it is the duty of the legislator to repeal or to change it, lest the contempt into which that rash ruling has fallen should extend to other, more just legislation.
More sensitive to Rome’s prejudices than I was aware, I recalled that although they grant sensuality a rôle they see only shameful folly in love;
We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.
He had come to that time in his life (it varies for every man) when a human being gives himself over to his demon or to his genius according to a mysterious law which orders him either to destroy or to surpass himself.
A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.