We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.

Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals.

I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence.

Masterpieces are no more than the shipwrecked flotsam of great minds.

The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe envelops just as frequently, when love is in question, the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had been brought to me by Gilberte's letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that any satisfaction we can give it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion of being healed.

Photography is the product of complete alienation.