You cannot be surprised at anything men do, they're such brutes. - Marcel Proust

A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.

...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his soul.

The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. Suppose that, every morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside it — oh! I don't know; shall we say Pascal's Pensées?