The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.

I cannot express the uneasiness caused in me by this intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room I had at last filled with myself to the point of paying no more attention to the room than to that self. The anesthetizing influence of habit having ceased, I would begin to have thoughts, and feelings, and they are such sad things.

A picture's beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it.

Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.

The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.

They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.