“A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.”

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

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

Read in order to live.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

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

Talent is nothing but long patience.

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

The principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.

I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

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

What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.

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