 One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness. |
| I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests. |
| I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings. |
| Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying. Topics: Education |
| Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. |
| Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. |
| There is no truth. There is only perception. |
| One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels. |
| I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none. |
| Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion. |
| Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living. |
| All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry. |
| Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in. |
| Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others. |
| The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded. |
| The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect. |
| One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness. |
| I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity. |
| The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. |
| Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. |
