50 quotes
French novelist (1821–1880)
“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
"My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real."
on Art
"Our ignorance of history makes us libel to our own times. People have always been like this."
on History
"I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings."
on Imagination
"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe."
on Writing
"A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies."
on Friendship
"One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness."
on Life
"Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it."
on Happiness
"Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings."
on Love
"The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel."
"Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer."
"There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more"
"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."
on Truth
"One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels."
on Emotion
"Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?"
"Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment."
"Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fin"
"And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors."
on Creativity
"Every notary carries about inside him the debris of a poet."
"Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions."
on Critical Thinking
"Read in oreder to live"
on Learning
