True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of varietyis but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety.

The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors.

All the mind's activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality.

There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.

The heart changes...but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

The true voyage of discovery is not a journey to a new place; it is learning to see with new eyes.

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.