“A love of nature is a consolation against failure.”

It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience.

I wear myself out trying to render the orange trees so that they’re not stiff but like those I saw by Botticelli in Florence. It’s a dream that won’t come true.

I don’t think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal and that’s all I would have asked for, for I know I’m worth as much as they.

My ambition is limited to the desire to capture something transient, and yet, this ambition is excessive.

In love, there’s sentiment and passion; I know only sentiment through myself, passion through others. I hear certain voices I know say: sentiment=love of the intellect; I can answer: passion=the love of the body.

Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.

I love only extreme novelty or the things of the past.

A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable.

A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.

I write what I call ‘novels of consolation’ for people who are bright and sophisticated.

None better suited to the cure of our temporal ills than a friend to whom we may turn for consolation in time of trouble, and with whom we may share happiness in time of joy.

We are great and our faults are great and therefore our problems great and great are our consolations.

The God of all consolation, who heals the broken hearts and takes care of the wounds, hear our prayer:

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation – it is the one unbreakable diamond.