Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.

She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.

As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.

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

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.