Within the House, Without

1. If you're not pleasant to look at, forget about love—you won't even find someone willing to offer you comfort.

2. I've become so thoroughly ruined that no one believes I was ever good, not even once.

3. A woman's affection gives no less than a man's love, and yet it gives so much more.

4. I've spent all this time planning to publish a book of poems, yet I haven't found a single hour to write one.

5. Each time I gaze at a beautiful woman, my love changes hands. I lay all the blame for this inconstancy at the feet of my aesthetic sensibility.

6. Maturity begins the moment a person learns to delight in things that are forbidden.

7. To love someone means to silently accept all the things about them you dislike. If you cannot accept them, you don't love them at all—you love only yourself.

8. The boy was once a gifted painter. His mother, fearing it would harm his studies, burned all his sketchbooks and beat him savagely. After that, he became neither a painter nor a good student.

9. Women bare their hearts by removing their clothes; men remove their clothes hoping to bare their hearts.

10. New love dies in the embrace of old love. Memory is the assassin of new love.

11. If you cannot hold contradictions, you will have nothing—not sex, not status, not honor, not renown.

12. She left suddenly, without warning. I felt no sorrow. I didn't know how to live without her, so I didn't try. I discovered that the rest of my life was magnificent.

13. Those who release their friend's hand to hold their lover's—they find neither the peace of love nor the solace of friendship.

14. There was a time when many wanted to speak to me for no reason at all. Now hardly anyone does. I understand: I'm growing old.

15. Everyone thinks I love reading books. The truth is, I love searching for books, buying books, and talking about books. Buying a book lifts my spirits, and when my spirits are lifted, everything feels right. Money, sometimes, is the cure for regret.

16. Chastity runs deeper in desire than in love, for desire never lies.

17. The higher one climbs, the lonelier one becomes. Greatness and solitude are nearly synonymous.

18. Each time I tell you "I love you," I am struck down. Is this, then, what honesty is called?

19. The child born of a mother spends a lifetime at war with her.

20. Why have you returned, having strangled every last bit of my love to death? Can the dead ever rise again?