What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.

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

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.