Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.
If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish.
It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?’
The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.
Oh, my dear, it’s rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he’s in love with you.’
Didn’t you mean them?’
At the moment.
When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
Oh, it’s always the same,’ she sighed, ‘if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.
It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the sense; but, child, a man who dies for his country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it.
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one’s life with her.
Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.
A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.