Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.

We must love men more than things, and I admire and weep more for the soldiers than for the churches which were only the recording of an heroic gesture which today is reenacted at every moment.

That which we remember of our conduct is ignored by our closest neighbour; but that which we have forgotten having said, or even what we never said, will cause laughter even into the next world.

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise would remain unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.

People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.

Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

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