This is one of the most quotable books I've ever read. While reading, I even recognized some quotes I've seen before because they are so popular-and for good reason!
Here are some of my favourites.
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“To define is to limit.”
“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”
“What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.”
“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”
“Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. ”
“Man is many things, but he is not rational.”
“Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.”
“But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.”
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