If the secret of being a bore is to tell all, the secret of pleasing is to say just enough to be -not understood, but divined.

And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute. It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires.

Man begins by loving love and ends by loving a woman. Woman begins by loving a man and ends by loving love.

Art includes everything which stimulates the desire to live; science includes everything which sharpens the desire to know. Art, even the most disinterested, the most disembodied, is the auxiliary of life.

We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.

Women are the simple, and poets the superior, artisans of language... the intervention of grammarians is almost always bad.

To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes-countrysides and figures, movements and gestures-how could he have a style, that is originality?