A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
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Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
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Give me a dozen such heartbreaks, if that would help me lose a couple of pounds.
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I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.
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I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
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I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.
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If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.
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In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.
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It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
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It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.
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It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
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January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.
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Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.
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My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.
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Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.
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No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.
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On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah! what a dream, to live in that! - the other stifles us at the first breath.
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One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
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Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
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Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.
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Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
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Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.
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The cat is the animal to whom the Creator gave the biggest eye, the softest fur, the most supremely delicate nostrils, a mobile ear, an unrivaled paw and a curved claw borrowed from the rose-tree.
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The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.
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The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.
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The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
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The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.
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There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.
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To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
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Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
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Truffles must come to the table in their own stock [and] as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine-if you have never visited it-the desolate kingdom where it rules.
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Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: "It's four o clock. At five I have my abyss... "
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What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.
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Writing only leads to more writing.
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You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
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You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
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You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
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