The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

Read in order to live.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.