A rich woman seems to have all her banknotes about her, guarding her virtue, like a cuirass, in the lining of her corset.
When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women.
Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.
The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
Stupidity is an immovable object: you can’t try to attack it wiithout being broken by it.
Put all your rage and madness into your work and live as orderly a life as possible.
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
It is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt.
I know nothing more noble than the contemplation of the world.
Madame Aubain’s servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l’Eveque for half a century.
The citadel of Machaerus rose east of the Dead Sea on a basalt Peak shaped like a cone, girdled by four deep valleys; two about its sides, one in front, and the fourth behind.
Earth has its boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless.
The future is the worst thing about the present.
The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They’re a refuge from life’s disillusionments.