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.
You don’t make art out of good intentions.
There is no truth. There is only perception.
There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me.
Haven’t you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you’ve had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?
Doesn’t it seem to you,” asked Madame Bovary, “that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?
If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.
I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything.
When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.
Every notary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.
The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.