I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.

Beware of all the paradoxical in love. It is simplicity which saves, it is simplicity which brings happiness...Love should be love.

Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.

I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire.

If a given combination of trees, mountains, water, and houses, say a landscape, is beautiful, it is not so by itself, but because of me, of my favor, of the idea or feeling I attach to it.

I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.