The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies.

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.

We study ourselves three weeks, we love each other three months, we squabble three years, we tolerate each other thirty years, and then the children start all over again.

History is nothing but a problem of mechanics applied to psychology.

I've met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.

There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.

I wish to reproduce things as they are or as they would be even if I myself did not exist.