On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.

Nothing is as tedious as the limping days, When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways, And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom, Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom

Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.

What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?

My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present