Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.

He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.

How strange it is that when I was a child I tried to be like a grownup, yet as soon as I ceased to be a child I often longed to be like one.

It seems to me that what we call beauty in a face lies in the smile: if the smile heightens the charm of the face, the face is a beautiful one; if it does not alter it, the face is ordinary, and if it is spoilt by a smile, it is ugly.

Besides, to fall out of love and in love at the same time is to love twice as deeply as one did before.

For the first time I envisaged the idea that we - that is, our family - were not the only people in the world, that not every conceivable interest was centered in ourselves but that there existed another life - that of people who had nothing in common with us, cared nothing for us, had no idea of our existence even. I must have known all this before but I had not known it as I did now - I had not realized it; I had not felt it.

I endeavor to recall the happy comforting dreams interrupted by my returning to consciousness of reality, but to my astonishment so soon as I recapture the thread of my former reverie I find it impossible to go on with it and, most astonishing of all, my imaginings no longer afford me any pleasure.

I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless, disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed, since childhood's days, for those days to come back to me!