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

But the most wretched thing, is it not-is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.

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

The most important thing in the world is to hold your soul aloft.

I know nothing more noble than the contemplation of the world.

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.