Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.

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

There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me

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

Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.