Speaking of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us.

No artist tolerates reality.

A letter is an unannounced visit, the postman the agent of rude surprises. One ought to reserve an hour a week for receiving letters and afterwards take a bath.

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.

The flame is not as bright to itself as it is to those it illuminates: so too the sage.

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.