Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.

As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.

The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.

Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.

Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.