I sometimes suspect that half our difficulties are imaginary and that if we kept quiet about them they would disappear.

There are some people who want to throw their arms round you just because it's Christmas, there are other people who want to strangle you just because its Christmas

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own - brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.

There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.

Everyone rushes wherever his instincts impel him, the populace swarms like insects over a corpse, poets pass by without having the time to sculpt their thoughts, hardly have they scribbled their ideas down on sheets of paper than the sheets are blown away; everything glitters and everything resounds in this masquerade, beneath its ephemeral royalties and its cardboard scepters, gold flows, wine cascades, cold debauchery lifts her skirts and jigs around…horror! horror! and then there hangs over it all a veil that each one grabs part of to hide himself the best he can. Derision! Horror – horror!