“Man is summed up in Art. All the rest is moonshine.”

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

Whatever one may do, one is always alone in the world.

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever enabling us to discover what they are.

Armenia is dying, but it will survive. The little blood that is left is precious blood that will give birth to a heroic generation. A nation that does not want to die, does not die.

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

Determination. To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream. Not only plan, but also believe.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

All changes, even the most longed for, must have their melancholy

We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we yearn for another that will be eternal.

The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.

All ought to be common among friends.

We should adopt his principles and govern men as they are and not as what we’d like them to be.

Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

Each person’s work is always a portrait of himself.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.

Sunlight is painting.

Giving comfort under affliction requires that penetration into the human mind, joined to that experience which knows how to soothe, how to reason, and how to ridicule; taking the utmost care never to apply those arts improperly.

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.