But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any… - Oscar Wilde

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Les femmes nous aiment pour nos défauts. Si nous en avons une somme convenable, elles nous pardonnent tout, même d'être intelligents. (...)
- Naturellement, c'est la vérité. Si nous ne vous aimions pas pour vos défauts, que deviendriez-vous tous ? Pas un de vous ne se marierait. Vous ne seriez plus qu'un tas d'infortunés célibataires. Ce qui, d'ailleurs, ne vous changerait pas beaucoup. Car aujourd'hui tous les hommes mariés vivent en célibataires, et tous les célibataires en hommes mariés.