The most powerful soporific is sleep itself.

The stellar universe is not so difficult to understand as the real actions of other people, especially of the people with whom we are in love.

What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.

I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.

The loss of a sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition.

A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.