I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.

As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning, . . . [then] they fall down the curtains.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

Genius is childhood recalled at will.

To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.