Everything ends this way in France – everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs – everything is a pretext for a good dinner.
In matters of money there’s no such thing as enough.
Life consists of nothing more than the happiness we can get out of it.
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
Until the day of his death no man can be sure of his courage.
Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books – but it is terrible when one has to live it.
Saintliness is also a temptation.
I don’t want people to love me. It makes for obligations.
The true masters of the art of living are already happy...
Death is beautiful. It alone gives love its true habitat.
Poor little men, poor little cocks! As soon as they’re old enough, they swell their plumage to be conquerors. If they only knew that it’s enough to be just a little bit wounded and sad in order to obtain everything without fighting for it.
Beauty, real beauty, is something very grave. If there is a God, He must be partly that.
A happy love is full of quarrels, you know.
My part is not a heroic one, but I shall play my part.
Nothing is true but what is never said.
What will my happiness be like? What kind of happy woman will Antigone grow into? What base things will she have to do, day after day, in order to snatch her own little scrap of happiness? Tell me – who will she have to lie to? Smile at? Sell herself to? Who will she have to avert her eyes from, and leave to die?
The garden was still asleep. I caught it unawares. A garden that hasn’t yet begun to think about people. Beautiful.
Life’s not what you think. It’s like water – the young let it slip through their fingers without thinking. Shut your hands, Antigone, shut them tight and hold it back. You’ll see – it’ll turn into something small and hard that you can sit and munch in the sun.
I don’t mind being killed, but I don’t want them to touch me.