All happiness is a work of art: the smallest error falsifies it, the slightest hesitation alters it, the least heaviness spoils it, the slightest stupidity brutalizes it.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.

I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.

Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.

The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.

There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty.

One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.