He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it.
These tears do me good, they have watered the parched place; perhaps my heart will grow again there!
God has written in the law of nature that when two people are joined in love or friendship, one must always give his heart more perfectly than the other.
Simplicity is the essence of the great, the true, and the beautiful in art.
No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.
The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.
The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine.
No human creature can give orders to love.
Art for art’s sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.
The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.
We must have a passion in life.
We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.
One wastes so much time, one is so prodigal of life, at twenty! Our days of winter count for double. That is the compensation of the old.
God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.
Where there is no longer love, there is no longer anything.
Experience is always a trustworthy guide; it may not tell you everything, but it never lies.
Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her.
Discouragement seizes us only when we can no longer count on chance.