In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on.

The morality of art is in its very beauty.

What is glory? It is to have a lot of nonsense talked about you.

What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.

Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.