It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

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.

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

What is more immoral than war?

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.

To love the one who loves you, To admire the one who admires you, In a word, to be the idol of one’s idol, Is exceeding the limit of human joy; It is stealing fire...

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

The future is the worst thing about the present.

In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

Oh, the miraculous energy that flows between two people who care enough to get beyond surfaces and games, who are willing to take the risks of being totally open, of listening, of responding with the...

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

The maxims of men reveal their characters.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.

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...

One mustn’t ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that’s the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

All over the land are vast and handsome pastures, with good grass for cattle, and it strikes me the soil would be very fertile were the country inhabited and improved by reasonable people.

If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

One can not be just if one is not humane.

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

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.

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

One mustn’t look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies.

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of...

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

Seeing that our thirst was increasing and the water was killing us, while the storm did not abate, we agreed to trust to God, Our Lord, and rather risk the perils of the sea than...

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.

Prosperity makes few friends.

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

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.