Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

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.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.

Once one has kissed a cadaver's forehead, there always remains something of it on the lips, an infinite bitterness, an aftertasteof nothingness that nothing can erase.

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had always loved church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions and she rebelled before the mysteries of faith just as she grew ever more restive under discipline, which was antipathetic to her nature.