"It is not good for a masterpiece to be fully known, at the first try. Future generations must be given time to mature. Otherwise, they change their minds. (February 18, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 181)"

"If you fear loneliness, try not to be righteous. (July 10, C.E.1905)"

"My books are so far removed from me that I am already a kind of posterity to them. This is my precise judgment: I will never read them again. (November 29, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 245)"

"A journal editor will give you a good hour to explain why he doesn't have time to read your manuscript. But at least he had that hour to read it. (December 10, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 247)"

"To have the dreams light asleep with eyes full of moon. (December 27, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 248)"

"The white blackbird exists, but it is so white that you can't see it. The black blackbird is but its shadow. (August 11, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 172)"

"When he praises someone, he feels like he's denigrating himself a bit. (January 11, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 63)"

"In some friends there is nothing pleasant but their virginity. When you got married to them, things don't go well anymore. (October 9, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 173)"

"When he listened to the speeches of the women he seemed to be asleep, but every now and then he made a little movement with his long nonsense hunter ears. (September 15, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 66)"

"[Leaf|leaves]] move like the lips of a child who doesn't quite know his lesson and who is looking for what he has to say. (December 17, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 175)"

"My literature is like a series of letters addressed to myself, which I allow you to read. (May 17, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 76)"

"I will love you long enough to recognize that your pretty mole is but a wart. (March 2, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 73)"

"Life leads to anything, as long as you get out of it. (January 8, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 177)"

"The blessed solitude in which one can finally thoroughly wipe one's nose. (Sept. 11, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 66)"

"You go to visit a sick person to tell you about all the illnesses you have had or that others have had. (February 18, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 180)"

"That little girl seems to be in a cage behind her grandiose undulating harp, and she keeps scratching the bars of her cage with her fingers. (January 28, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 178)"

"And the grasshopper that we decapitate and that, without losing their heads for so little, fly out of the window with a stroke of the wing? (March 1, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 73)"

"The smell of ink is enough to make my dreams die. (September 15, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 66)"

"A fly is dirtier in winter than in summer. It seems that she stayed in our room not because of the heat, but only because she was attracted by our rotten smell. (November 25, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 190)"

"She is the most faithful of all the wives: in fact, she has not deceived any of her lovers. (October 23, C.E.1981; Vergani, p. 184)"

"The poets take the pleasure of sitting on Olympus; but they are too small, and their feet do not touch the ground. (December 11, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 191)"

"children should be optional apparitions. When Fantec sees me again a fortnight later, he tells me that I have grown up. (February 4, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 72)"

"Distinguished critic, I understand your criticism very well. Know, let it be said between us, that I don't always like myself either. (October 14, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 67)"

"My worn pants on the knee denounce that every night I look to see if there is someone under the bed. (December 22, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 191)"

"Our friendship could no longer go on: we had poured too much into each other. (March 29, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)"

"Death could be the dream if, at a stroke, one could open an eye. (May 24, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 196)"

"Brain. Man walks with his roots in his head. (May 23, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 196)"

"It's not enough to be happy! It is also necessary that others are not. (May 16, 1894; Vergani, p. 75)"

"The layman is the man who tirelessly seeks God and never finds Him. (June 16, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 198)"

"A farmer is a tree trunk that can move. (March 6, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)"

"I would be anarchist if I were unhappy. But I have nothing to complain about. How could one be both anarchic and satisfied? (March 6, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)"

"Fidelity, during life, is nothing: but what a humiliation it is to die and appear before God without ever having deceived one's wife! (June 16, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 198)"

"Our love for the countryside: a rustic flash in the pan. (May 11, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 75)"

"Friends. We see each other too much, we see each other less, we don't see each other anymore. (April 9, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)"

"There are people like that boring who make us lose a day in five minutes. (February 1, C.E.1903)"

"His accomplishments say he's talented, and his fiascos say he's a thinker. (January 25, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 200)"

"Rostand, the poet of crowds who think they are intelligent. (July 12, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 207)"

"You have to let your prose cool like a cream before tasting it. (May 7, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 75)"

"Man is an animal that rolls its eyes and sees only the spiders of the ceiling. (April 10, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)"

"When you are sick the face immediately begins to decompose and the earth of which we are made begins to resurface. (July 12, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 207)"

"The thought of being thirty exhausts me. I have a whole dead life behind me. In front of me is an opaque existence in which I foresee nothing. I feel old, and sad like an old man. (May 29, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 76)"

"wrinkles are nothing but broadly engraved smiles. (December 25, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 135)"

"The mimosa is, among flowers, what the canary is among birds. (February 20, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 108)"

"The hand that writes must always try to ignore the reading eye. (July 7, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 78)"

"The moralists who extol work make me think of those fellows who have been deceived by the lure of a fairground sideshow and, in revenge, try to get others in. (March 11, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 216)"

"As mayor I have to worry about the good maintenance of the roads in the countryside: as a poet I would prefer them to be neglected. (May 28, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 218)"

"Peasant women are like the flowers of the field that, if you smell them, either taste of nothing or stink. (May 23, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 218)"

"I'm not made for fighting. I'm made to kill people by shooting in the backside. (April 19, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 217)"

"My literature is a continual attempt to rectify what I feel in life, like someone feverishly consulting a book to know what needs to be done to revive the drowned man lying on the shore. (May 30, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 77)"

"Childhood memories drawn with an unlit match. (January 22, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 63)"