All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.

One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn.

The mind's eye can nowhere find anything more dazzling or more dark than in man; it can fix itself upon nothing which is more awful, more complex, more mysterious, or more infinite. There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children.