How many people have wanted to kill themselves, and have been content with tearing up their photograph!

Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

The bourgeois are other people.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it