Sometimes I think I’m liquefying like an old Camembert

Print: to see one’s name in print! – Some people commit a crime for no other reason

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.

Read in oreder to live

Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom

Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.

There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me

But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

The more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

Human speech is a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.

Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless...

Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.

By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream

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...

I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like...

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

Quelle bassesse que de penser toujours au prolongement de son existence! La vie n’est bonne qu’à la condition d’en jouir. (ch. III)

[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and...

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

Je ne suis pas plus moderne qu’ancien, pas plus Français que Chinois, et l’idée de la patrie c’est-à-dire l’obligation où l’on est de vivre sur un coin de terre marqué en rouge ou en bleu...

How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.

I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don’t...

Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in...

On days when it was too hot, they did not leave their room. The dazzling brilliance from outside plastered bars of light between the slats of the blinds. Not a sound in the village. Down...

I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want...

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic oneself

I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.

Aquela putain, Emma Bovary, tem a vida eterna e eu morro como um cão.

You don’t make art out of good intentions.

Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?

One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

Has it ever happened to you,” Léon went on, “to come across some vague idea of one’s own in a book, some dim image that comes to you from afar, and as the completest expression...

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

Books are made not like children but like pyramids and they’re just as useless! And they stay in the desert! Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them.

One mustn’t always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I...

It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.

rapture” – words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.

Sadness is a vice.

For two nights Félicité never left the dead girl. She said the same prayers over and over again, sprinkled holy water on the sheets, then sat down again to watch. At the end of her...

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the...