The Most Familiar Precepts Are Not Always

Laissons Les Jolies Femmes Aux Hommes Sans Imagination. Leave The Pretty Women For The Men Without Imagination.

No Exile At The South Pole Or On The Summit Of Mont Blanc Separates Us More Effectively From Others Than The Practice Of A Hidden Vice.

Pleasures Are Like Photographs: In The Presence Of The Person We Love, We Take Only Negatives, Which We Develop Later, At Home, When We Have At Our Disposal Once More Our Inner Dark Room, The Door Of Which It Is Strictly Forbidden To Open While Others Are Present.

The True Paradises Are The Paradises That We Have Lost.

For Although We Know That The Years Pass, That Youth Gives Way To Old Age, That Fortunes And Thrones Crumble (even The Most Solid Among Them) And That Fame Is Transitory, The Manner In Which—by Means Of A Sort Of Snapshot—we Take Cognisance Of This Moving Universe Whirled Along By Time, Has The Contrary Effect Of Immobilising It.