Most people believe it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It is his own self that each of them...

The color of truth is grey.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

Bisogna lasciare la ragione agli altri perché questo li consola di non aver altro.

Si le grain de blé qui est tombé en terre ne meurt, il reste seul ; mais, s’il meurt, il porte beaucoup de fruit. Celui qui aime sa vie la perdra, et celui qui hait...

Yet I’m sure there’s something more to be read in a man. People dare not — they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry — I call them the laws of fear. People...

Dès que Séraphine l’a laissé seul, Gontran se jette à genoux au pied du lit ; il enfonce son front dans les draps, mais ne parvient pas à pleurer ; aucun élan ne soulève son...

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them...

Dezgustată de pozitivismul vieţii,sufletul său închis şi umilit începea să iubească poezia.Lua drept poetic tot ceea ce o ajuta să evadeze din viaţă.

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

Do you know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead-letter nowadays? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In Greece, ideas went hand-in-hand with life; so that the artist’s life...

We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in...

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

He (Lafcadio) was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, & contemplating–not without satisfaction–his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich...

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom

The secret seemed to me much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one who had known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary people, like a man who has...

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take...

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

Mieux vaut être haï pour ce que l’on est, qu’aimé pour ce que l’on n’est pas.

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but...

In other people’s company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring…

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

I hoped at first to find a rather more direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did not...

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

Les choses les plus belles sont celles que souffle la folie et qu’écrit la raison. Il faut demeurer entre les deux, tout près de la folie quand on rêve, tout prêt de la raison quand...

I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

There’s no better cure for the fear of taking after one’s father, than not to know who he is.

Because it was natural, could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature!

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

She already loved me too much to see me as I was.

Terre en vacance d’oeuvres d’art. Je méprise ceux qui ne savent reconnaître la beauté que transcrite déjà et toute interprétée. Le peuple arabe a ceci d’admirable que, son art, il le vit, il le chante...

Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck...

I do not want to recollect. I should be afraid of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create...

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.

Le présent serait plein de tous les avenirs, si le passé n’y projetait déjà une histoire.

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, “Why did I never realize before that that...