"I am sick of the governessy attitude of our age, which is coming to be more genuinely presumptuous, nosier and more b…"

"[T]here is a flaw in civilization from the instant it has to admit fear."

"[U]ntruths are thieves, robbing us of a birthright."

"Cicero, in invoking the law of heaven, invoked what was by nature of heaven: law — inviolable principle, better than …"

"It is thought that women inspire by their beauty; more often they do so by their longings."

"Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself — in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience."

"Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem."

"Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, t…"

"The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends."

"This is the worst of love, this unmeant mystification — someone smiling and going out without saying where, or a lett…"