"But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality."
"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
"You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."
"But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to."
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."