“One might have said that reason made him flee from reason.”

“The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book. ”

“[...] marriage is one thing, and love is another...You need to have a solid canvas; nobody stops you to weave the arabesques...”

“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.”

“Two human beings anchored to one another are like two ships shaken by waves; their carcases collide with one another and creak.”

“Every ten years you should delete from your mind a few ideas that your experience has proven to be false, dangerous.”

“The friendship of two young people,' says Goethe somewhere, 'is delightful when the girl likes to learn and the boy to teach.' It will perhaps be said that this virgin curiosity is no more than unconscious physical desire; but what does it matter, if this desire sharpens the mind and deadens conceit?”