Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing.

One can lie with the mouth, but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

However much we may feel for the misery of someone close to us, we always act with some artificiality in their presence. We hold-back from telling them everything we think, often because we do not genuinely mean what we say; or because we take a pleasure in their plight, thankful that we are not affected.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

love as a passion—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.

In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person's mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage.