Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.
Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.
A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places.
Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.
The body has a mind of its own.
The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.
Even boredom has its crises.
Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
Never ask a bore a question.
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.
Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.
In every death, a busy world comes to an end.
Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.
Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.
Art seduces, but does not exploit.
Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.
For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.
Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.
Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.
Opportunity knocks, but doesn't always answer to its name.
I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
The only peace is being out of earshot.
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.
General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.
Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.
Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?