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

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.

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

There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one’s vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.

In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.