We needed germans in Paris to hear Wagner.

When one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, “What are her surroundings? What has been her life? All one’s future happiness lies in the answer.

Unkindness is inspired by hatred, anger fuels it into action in which there is no great joy; it would take sadism to turn it into something pleasurable; unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

He had so long since ceased to direct his life toward any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of quotidian satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally stating his belief even to himself that he would remain all his life in that condition, which only death could alter.

The opinions which we hold of one another our relations with friends and kinsfolk are in no sense permanent save in appearance but are as eternally fluid as the sea itself.