Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.
Get black on white.
Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.
The only certainty is death.
The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.
In fact living is dying.
There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events. Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart.
Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence?
If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.
The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius.
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
