The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead.

Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.

[On travel:] Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison?

A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.

Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits a succession of chords.

age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.

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.