Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself.
Translating is writing.
Any truth creates a scandal.
Every invalid is a prisoner.
Books are not life, only its ashes.
All happiness is a form of innocence.
nothing is slower than the true birth of a man
The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself
We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.
No one understands eternity. One simply recognizes its existence.
Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.
Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.
It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.
Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul.
There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty.
Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.
Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.
I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.
I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily
Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.
I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily.
For me, a poet is someone who is 'in contact.' Someone through whom a current is passing.
Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.
age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.
But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts.
I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.
[On travel:] Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison?
In the evenings the art of building gave way to that of music, which is architecture, too, though invisible.
To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tanatmount to constant travel: One is traveling with the earth.
If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie
I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography.
Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.
One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.
Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.
Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself.
On the whole, however, it is only out of pride or gross ignorance, or cowardice, that we refuse to see in the present the lineaments of times to come.
the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.
A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.
The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.
All happiness is a work of art: the smallest error falsifies it, the slightest hesitation alters it, the least heaviness spoils it, the slightest stupidity brutalizes it.
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.
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.
I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.
