"Je veux qu'on me voit en ma façon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans étude et artifice; car c'est moi que je peins...Je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre."

"L'homme est bien insensé. Il ne saurait forger un ciron, et forge des Dieux à douzaines."

"To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom."

"We are brought to a belief of God either by reason or by force. Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. Yet will they not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven if you give them a good thrust with a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness has abated and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they will easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled to the public faith and examples."

"Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God."

"Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies soever"

"The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; 'tis purely the gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: 'tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.""

"The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor."

"On n'enseigne pas l'intellectualisme en une école."

"On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage."

"Savoir se libérer n'est rien; l'ardu, c'est savoir être libre."

"Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer."

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."

"Croyez ceux qui cherchent la vérité, doutez de ceux qui la trouvent; doutez de tout, mais ne doutez pas de vous-même."

"Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor."

"C'est avec de beaux sentiments qu'on fait de la mauvaise littérature."

"The most decisive actions of our life — I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future — are, more often than not, unconsidered."

"There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them."

"Le péché, c'est ce qui obscurcit l'âme."

"True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others."

"Ce qu'un autre aurait aussi bien fait que toi, ne le fais pas. Ce qu'un autre aurait aussi bien dit que toi, ne le dis pas, — aussi bien écrit que toi, ne l'écris pas. Ne t'attache en toi qu'à ce que tu sens qui n'est nulle part ailleurs qu'en toi-même, et crée de toi, impatiemment ou patiemment, ah! le plus irremplaçable des êtres."

"...que toute émotion sache te devenir une ivresse. Si ce que tu manges ne te grise pas, c'est que tu n'avais pas assez faim."

"Familles, je vous hais! foyers clos; portes refermées; possessions jalouses du bonheur."

"La sagesse n'est pas dans la raison, mais dans l'amour."

"And every choice, as Gide insisted, entails the rejection of what might have been better."

"When people felt they had a right to seek out Christ before the torment, and in the fullness of his joy—it was too late; the cross had overcome Christ himself; it was Christ crucified that people continued to see and teach. And thus it is that religion came to plunge the world into gloom."

"When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools."

"We call “happiness” a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy."

"The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness."

"At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing."

"The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament."

"There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection."

"Often the best in us springs from the worst in us."

"True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest."

"Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves."

"O my dearest and most lovable thought, why should I try further to legitimize your birth?"

"The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes."

"Pourtant il me semble que, n'eussé-je connu ni Dostoïevski, ni Nietzsche, ni Freud, ni X. ou Z., j'aurais pensé tout de même, et que j'ai trouvé chez eux plutôt une autorisation qu'un éveil. Surtout ils m'ont appris à ne plus douter de moi-même, à ne pas avoir peur de ma pensée et à me laisser mener par elle, puisqu'aussi bien je les y retrouvais."

"Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools."

"Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him."

"In my present insistence on high standards you will see that there is less self-indulgence than resolve and application. I do not let the Christian monopolize the ideal of perfection. I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite."

"A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective."

"The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity."

"Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon."

"The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious."

"No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond."

"The abominable effort to take one's sins with one to paradise."

"Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all."

"The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?"