When will the arbitrary be granted the place it deserves in the formation of works and ideas?

The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.

In the world we live in everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.

It is impossible for me to envisage a picture as being other than a window, and why my first concern is then to know what it looks out on.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Over and above the various prejudices I acknowledge, the affinities I feel, the attractions I succumb to, the events which occur to me and to me alone- over and above a sum of movements I am conscious of making, of emotions I alone experience- I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them. Is it not precisely to the degree I become conscious of this difference that I shall recognize what I alone have been put on this earth to do, what unique message I alone may bear, so that I alone can answer for its fate?

Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.