After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee.

The finer the nature, and the higher the level at which it seeks to live, the lower in grief it not only sinks but dives: it goes to weep with beggars and mountebanks, for these make the shame of being unhappy less.

There is no doubt that sorrow brings one down in the world. The aristocratic privilege of silence belongs, you soon find out, to only the happy state- or, at least, to the state when pain keeps within bounds.

In big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.

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

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

Makes of men date, like makes of car.

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking along.

There's something so showy about desperation, it takes hard wits to see it's a grandiose form of funk.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.