The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.

If the flower were not attached to its stem, it would flee at the approach of man, like the insect or the bird; for the attribute of man on the earth, at least as long as he does not better understand his role, is to worry and frighten what he is not interested in taming for utilitarian purposes. Man is skillful in mistreating everything he can use

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.

The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them.

Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.

There is a law in life: When one door closes to us another one opens.

The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers the most from its own limitations.