The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consists in nothing more than the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives meaning to our life on this unavailing star

Then I though of reading - the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

There is one thing that matters / to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.

Don't tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.

Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he's only trying on one face after another till he finds his own

To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave the way the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.

What is more enchanting than the voices of young people when you can't hear what they say

When people talk of Ghosts I don't mention the Apparition by which I am haunted, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, which lurks in the plate glass of shop-windows, or leaps out of mirrors