Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us -ah! what a dream, to live in that! -the other stifles us at the first breath.

Real poverty is lack of books

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.

The cat is the animal to whom the Creator gave the biggest eye, the softest fur, the most supremely delicate nostrils, a mobile ear, an unrivaled paw and a curved claw borrowed from the rose-tree.

Never touch a butterfly’s wing with your finger.

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.

My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her.

How do you like them? like a pear, a lemon, a la Montgolfier, half an apple, or a cantaloupe? Go and choose, don’t be embarrassed.

I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.

That provisional tomb where the living exile sighs, weeps, fights and succumbs, and is born again, remembering nothing, with the day

Truffles must come to the table in their own stock [and] as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine-if you have never visited it-the desolate kingdom where it rules.

Bulldogs are adorable, with faces like toads that have been sat on

Look for a long time at what pleases you, and for a longer time at what pains you

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner

Who said you should be happy? Do your work

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude

Give me a dozen such heartbreaks, if that would help me lose a couple of pounds

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.

For to dream and then to return to reality only means that our qualms suffer a change of place and significance

What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised

Hope costs nothing

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

We only do well the things we like doing

By associating with the cat one only risks becoming richer.

By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.