Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.
Novelty, the most potent of all attractions, is also the most perishable.
Advice is always a confession.
In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
Love born of anxiety resembles a thorn shaped so that efforts to pull it out of one's flesh merely cause it to penetrate more deeply therein.
To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights.
Our minds have unbelievable power over our bodies.
British conversation is like a game of cricket or a boxing match; personal allusions are forbidden like hitting below the belt, and anyone who loses his temper is disqualified.
Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one's first productions.
Like a bird, when his cage is opened, stays on his perch, dazzled by freedom, the postponed traveler does not see that his cage, with its bars of anxiety, it is open.
Among the idle rich, boredom is one of the most common causes of unhappiness. People who have difficulty in earning their living may suffer greatly, but they are not bored. Wealthy men and women become bored when they depend upon the theater for their enjoyment instead of making their own lives interesting.
Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of truth. 'Lost Illusion' is the undisclosed title of every novel.
One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.
To desire to be perpetually in the society of a pretty woman until the end of one's days, is as if, because one likes good wine, one wished always to have one's mouth full of it.
Business is a combination of war and sport.
No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.
We don't love a woman for what she says, we like what she says because we love her.
Learning is nothing without cultivated manners, but when the two are combined in a woman, you have one of the most exquisite products of civilization.
Style is the outcome of constraint.
A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.
Either the soul is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes with the flesh and we shall not know that we are dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal.
The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.
Two human beings anchored to one another are like two ships shaken by waves; their carcases collide with one another and creak.
A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.
Genius consists of equal parts of natural aptitude and hard work.
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