We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute.

Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.

At the start of a new love as its ending, we are not exclusively attached to the object of that love, but rather the desire to love from which it will presently arise (and, later on, the memory it leaves behind) wanders voluptuously through a zone of interchangeable charms — simply natural charms, it may be, gratification of appetite, enjoyment of one's surroundings — which are harmonious enough for it not to feel at a loss in the presence of any one of them.