To contest an author’s right to create a poetic or realistic work is to want to force him to change his temperament, challenge his originality, refuse to allow him to use the eye and the intelligence nature has given him.
We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at.
The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius.
To lie about a far country is easy.
Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.
Killing is decreed by law but nature loves eternal youth. Whatever she does, however unconscious and unfeeling the act, she seems to cry out: ‘Quick! Quick! Quick!’ And the more she destroys, the more she is renewed.
In the East men know panic, but they do not know what fright is.
Travel, like dreams, is a door that opens from the real world into a world that is yet to be discovered.
The glasses were half full, which meant that the guests were completely so.
The secret is not to betray your ignorance. Just maneuver, avoid the quicksands and obstacles, and the rest can be found in a dictionary.
Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.
In fact living is dying.
The only certainty is death.
We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain.
I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.
Ale, not beer, in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of the name, to drink.
You must render: never report.
You’ll find that my coquetry is quite impartial, which allows me to keep my friends.
And taking her friend’s hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm round covering of a woman’s heart which the male often finds so satisfying that he makes no attempt to find what lies beneath it.
The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.