I have dreamed much and have done very little.

To see one's name in print! Some people commit a crime for no other reason.

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

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

One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

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.

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.