Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.

Casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

The principal thing in this world is to keep one's soul aloft.

Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.

For every bourgeois, in the heat of youth, if only for a day, for a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of heroic enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of oriental princesses; every rotary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.