One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.

Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

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.

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.

She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.