I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.

How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.

Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.

Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

Each of us really understands in others only those feelings he is capable of producing himself.

You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.