Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.

Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

The body has a mind of its own.

Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.

A blocked path also offers guidance.

I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.

Mind and body obstruct one another's pleasures.

For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.

My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?

Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.

Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

Money: power at its most liquid.

Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.

Even cats grow lonely and anxious.

Never ask a bore a question.

Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.

Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.

Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.

Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.

I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.

In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?

If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.

Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.

The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.

If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.

Rereading, we find a new book.

Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.

Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.

My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.

Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.

Fears and lies intensify consciousness.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

The passion for money is never fickle.

Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.