Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.
Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes.
Asceticism and celibacy can conceal many incapacities.
Without asceticism, self-indulgence would be insignificant.
The morose one refuses to smile even when he has just had his teeth cleaned.
Attaining even mediocrity is often a struggle.
In adding up her assets, the ambitious lady calculated the worth of her beautiful body as coldly as everything else.
The flesh of past lovers looks both familiar and strange.
Early every morning an old woman goes to the market to curse a grocery clerk, who curses back.
Dutch painting: daily life is enough.
Healthy vanity sweeps through life. Sickly vanity lies in bed.
Middle-aged adolescents are a libel on the real thing.
Flatter me, but delicately, please, for I am fastidious.
My mother's mild-eyed sadness looks at me from the eyes of those I love.
My mother wanted to shrink from my clinging, but did not.
My taking a seat on the Council of the Fathers caused a desperate fluttering among my ghosts.
If we knew enough, fortune would turn out to be nature.
When a modest man praises himself, people listen.
The modest youth somehow knows just what to do for the cameras.
What is Providence for you may be Nemesis for me.
The eye deals with excess more easily than the stomach does.
Austerity causes constipation; excess, diarrhea.
To make advice agreeable, try paradox or rhyme.
Of course I want to be good, but that may not be to your advantage.
Old among the young, poor among the rich, I adopt an air of indefinable superiority.
