Great Throughts Treasury

"It is not in novelty but in habit that we find the greatest pleasure."

"A careless man who will soon die but there is no presumption of has suddenly starts to set things in order. His life changes. He arranges his papers. He rises early, goes to bed early. With his sinful life is the past. His environment is happy. And it seems his cruel death all the more unjust."

"A disorderly man who is about to die, and does not know it, suddenly begins to put everything around him in order. His life changes. He files his papers. Her rises early and retires early to bed. He gives up his vices. His friends are pleased with the change that has come over him. As a result, his sudden death seems all the more unjust. He was going to have a happy life. Similarly, the regularity of my new life was merely the final preparation of a condemned man."

"All love has a youth, a maturity and an old age. Was I already at that final stage when love no longer satisfied me unless accompanied each time by some new trick?"

"But is the selfishness of children so very different from our own?"

"But at what point does the inhuman become the human?"

"Our happiness was a sand-castle. But the tide had no fixed time, and I hoped it would come in as late as possible."

"The one who loves always annoys the one who does not."

"The word love was sublime childishness. And, whatever the passion I feel in the sequel, never not be possible emotion of seeing a lovely girl of nineteen crying because she is too old."

"Facing death calmly is praiseworthy only if one faces it alone. Death together is no longer death, even for unbelievers. The source of sorrows lies not in leaving life, but in leaving that which gives it meaning. When love is our whole life, what difference is there between living together and dying together ?"

"Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else and failing."

"In my incoherence I was grateful that for a few moments I had known what it was to suffer"

"A disheveled man who will soon die but to have no suspicion, suddenly begins to put things right. His life changes. He arranges his papers. He gets up early, he goes to bed on time. With his sinful life in the past. His environment is happy. And so his cruel death seems more unfair."

"Freedom soon became a kind of drug."

"Her hands clung to my neck; they would not have held me so fast in a shipwreck. And I did not understand whether she wanted me to save her or to drown with her."

"Like the first taste of a strange fruit, my first kiss had been something of a disappointment. We derive our greatest pleasures not from novelty but from familiarity. A few minutes later I had not only grown accustomed to Marthe's mouth ? I could not do without it. And then she spoke of depriving me of it forever."

"Might becomes apparent only through injustice."

"Misfortune never seems just. Only happiness is one's due. In accepting this misfortune without demur I was not being brave. It was simply that my mind could not encompass it."

"People are jostling at the gates of heaven or Department stores. Words are bumping into each other"

"I find it impossible to appreciate anything the first time I experience it. So my enjoyment of the pleasure of love was to increase each day."

"Instinct is our guide; a guide which leads to our fall."

"If we live constantly with the same ideas, if we see only one, passionately desired object, we become unaware of how criminal are our desires. Naturally I had no wish to cause my father distress; yet I desired the very thing that would distress him most."

"The source of sorrows lies not in leaving life, but in leaving that which gives it meaning."

"We derive our greatest pleasures not from novelty but from familiarity."

"When you lie, you told a woman that you love, you can believe we are lying, but something pushed us to tell him, therefore it's true."

"So I left, and since I was sure I would never see Marthe again I tried hard not to think about her, with the result that I thought of nothing else."