I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.
Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.
I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.
Don’t go looking at me like that because you’ll wear your eyes out.
Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.
The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one’s toes on the gravestones.
How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!
These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here.
An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.
Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.
If something’s just, I’ll let myself be hacked to bits for it.
It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.
When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they’ve been taught is wrong!
When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another’s lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.
They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.
Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.
When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.
The camembert with its venison scent defeats the Marolles and Limbourg dull smells; It spreads its exhalation, smothering the other scents under its surprising breath abundance.
I do not despair in the least of ultimate triumph. I repeat it with intense conviction.