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

...the nose is generally the organ in which stupidity is most readily displayed.

In summoning even the wisest of physicians to our aid, it is probably that he is relying upon a scientific "truth", the error of which will become obvious in just a few years' time.

And so when studying faces, we do indeed measure them, but as painters, not as surveyors.

I was not at all worried about finding my doctor boring; I expected from him, thanks to an art of which the laws escaped me, that he pronounce concerning my health an indisputable oracle by consulting my entrails.

This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.

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.