Talent is a long patience.

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

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.

She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.