Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.
Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.
It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.
Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings, – a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level.
It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.