In March 1853 she was afflicted with a pain in the chest; her tongue seemed to be covered with a film; leeches failed to make her breathing any easier.

The author in his book must be like God in his universe, everywhere present and nowhere visible.

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker’s head if they’re not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it’s bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men...

As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost...

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set...

Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.

I believe in Supreme Being, a Creator, whoever he may be, it’s of no importance to me, who put us here on earth to do our duty as citizens and fathers; but I don’t need...

In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.

Without moving, you walk through lands you imagine you can see, and your thoughts, weaving in and out of the story, delight in the details or follow the outlines of the adventures. You merge with...

Comme l’on serait savant si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq à six livres. ( How wise one might be if one knew thoroughly only some half of a dozen books

His eagerness had turned into a routine; he embraced her at the same time every day. It was a habit like any other, a favourite pudding after the monotony of dinner.

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of a thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man

My kingdom is as wide as the universe and my wants have no limits. I go forward always, freeing spirits and weighing worlds, without fear, without compassion, without love, without God. I am called Science.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze; he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction....

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

It seems to me, alas, that if you can so thoroughly dissect your children who are still to be born, you don’t get horny enough to actually to father them.

For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Cheer up,’ said the captain’s son. ‘Life is long, and we are young.

Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained...

I am an obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abysses of thought, down...

No se piensa en nada; las horas pasan. Uno se pasea inmovil por paises que cree ver, y su pensamiento, enlazandose a la ficcion, se recrea en los detalles o sigue el hilo de las...

He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.

How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act.

You must not think that feeling is everything. . . . Art is nothing without form.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.

One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.

For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.

On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.

But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.

All one’s inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Happy are they who don’t doubt themselves and whose pens fly across the page. I myself hesitate, I falter, I become angry and fearful, my drive diminishes as my taste improves, and I brood more...

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

I’m no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue...

But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

You don’t know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.

Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.

Il s’était tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu’elles n’avaient pour lui rien d’original. Emma ressemblait à toutes les maîtresses ; et le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement,...

Adieu, mon cher vieux. Relis et rebûche ton conte. Laisse-le reposer et reprends-le, les livres ne se font pas comme les enfants, mais comme les pyramides, avec un dessin prémédité, et en apportant des grands...

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed at