The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Hate is a lack of imagination.

Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations

Murder is a dream because lack is the center of both.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

Life is not supposed to be easy. Stop working so hard to make it that way. Go ahead and handle it!

Our children will grow up confused, not respecting the Bible or anything else that is sacred.

I will not look at another's bowl intent on finding fault: a training to be observed.

He hadn't told me everything, but I'd left him for dead. I guess we were just about even...

It's not what you like but what you are like that's important.

You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.

Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.

We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.