Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious.

In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her.

Le veritable voyage de decouverte ne consiste pas a chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais a avoir de nouveaux yeux. (The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.)

Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

For everyone who, having no artistic sense-that is to say, no submission to subjective reality-may have the knack of reasoning about art till doomsday, especially if he be, in addition, a diplomat or financier in contact with the 'realities' of the present day, is only too ready to believe literature is an intellectual game which is destined to gradually be abandoned as time goes on.