“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.

There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.

Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.

The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.

He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.

when you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.

Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.