For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.

Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom

What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.

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

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

I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.

Talent is long patience.