A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.
We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.
It is symptomatic of the constricting specialism and the oppressive burden of fact of our time that it has been left to the imagination of a novelist, Marguerite Yourcenar, to create the broadest, the most balanced and in many ways the most authentic interpretation of the affair.
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when the presume to anticipate custom.
Any truth creates a scandal.
Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
More sensitive to Rome's prejudices than I was aware, I recalled that although they grant sensuality a rôle they see only shameful folly in love;
He had come to that time in his life (it varies for every man) when a human being gives himself over to his demon or to his genius according to a mysterious law which orders him either to destroy or to surpass himself.
This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
Any law too often subject to infraction is bad; it is the duty of the legislator to repeal or to change it, lest the contempt into which that rash ruling has fallen should extend to other, more just legislation.