The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.

The future is the worst thing about the present.

They took each other's advice, opened one book, went over to another, then did not know what to decide when opinions diverged so widely.

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.