To wash one's hair, make one's toilet, and put on scented robes even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure.

Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.

In life there are two things which are dependable. The pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of literature.

One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a little detail that he happens to know, implying that one's own version is inaccurate — disgusting behavior!

If letters did not exist, what dark depressions would come over one! When one has been worrying about something and wants to tell a certain person about it, what a relief it is to put it all down in a letter! Still greater is one's joy when a reply arrives. At that moment a letter really seems like an elixir of life.

A good lover will behave just as elegantly at dawn as at any other time.