A lawful kiss is never worth as much as a stolen one.
Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.
If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.
She was the temptress who had ensnared the first man, and who still continued her work at damnation; she was the being who is feeble, dangerous, mysteriously troubling. And even more than her body of perdition, he hated her loving soul.
Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms.
Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.
Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.
We breathe love as we breathe air; we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us.
Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.
The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.
I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt.
Anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of enemies.
You’ve never lived until you’ve almost died. For those who have fought for it, life has a flavor the protected shall never know.
To avoid each other, their eyes had developed an amazing mobility with all the cunning of enemies fearful of meeting each other head on.
The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.
It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.
Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It’s the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.
History, that excitable and unreliable old lady.
The public is composed of numerous groups whose cry to us writers is: ‘Comfort me.’ ‘Amuse me.’ ‘Touch my sympathies.’ ‘Make me sad.’ ‘Make me dream.’ ‘Make me laugh.’ ‘Make me shiver.’ ‘Make me weep.’ ‘Make me think.’