""But he doesn't finish his sentences," (he said). And they don't finish their thoughts. — To finish their thoughts. — To finish one's thought! It is a long process, it is rare. It gives intense pleasure. Because every finished thought easily enters the mind. They don't have the same need to be beautiful in order to please. It is enough for them to be finished. The situation of the soul that has had such thoughts communicates itself to other souls and transfers its repose to them."

"These thoughts form not only the foundation of my work, but of my life."

"It's not mental repose they seek, but mental laziness."

"Enter oneself (we say). When one enters oneself, one sees God."

"They want to shake up the world, not make it wiser."

"The time I once lost in pleasure I now lose in suffering."

"When you write easily, you always think you have more talent than you really do."

"There is nothing serious in civil life except good and evil, vice and virtue. Everything else in it should be a game."

"It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas."

"In the same way crimes have increased laws, errors have increased explanations."

"Those thoughts that come to us suddenly and that are not yet ours."

"I know too well what I am going to say. I know it too well before writing."

"Thoughts that are light, clear, distinct, finished; and words that resemble their thoughts. Words that often retain their meaning even when they are detached from others and that please when isolated as sounds."

"For simple light is perhaps still more beautiful than colors."

"Glory. Lovelier to desire than to possess."

"All things that are easy to say have already been perfectly said."

"Once we have tasted the juice of words, our mind can no longer pass them by. We drink thought from them."

"We must try, as much as possible, not to mistrust anyone."

"My ideas! It is the house for lodging them that costs me so much to build."

"All these young minds the revolution has heated up and brought to flower before their time, before their age."

"When we speak, we write what we are saying in the air."

"Does talent have any need of passions? Yes, of many passions — repressed."

"To judge things of taste, we must give ourselves time to taste them."

"Let us look to beautiful poetry for the material of a beautiful prose."

"An oratorical style often has the same drawbacks as those operas in which the music prevents you from hearing the words. Here the words prevent you from seeing the thoughts."

"All reflection is art."

"This poetic nudity within words."

"One can advance a long time in life without aging."

"The soul speaks to itself in parables."

"Like those dreams that have pleased us. They escape us and we vainly try to hold onto them."

"My dreams are more amorous than my actions have ever been."

"Genius is the aptitude for seeing invisible things, for stirring intangible things, for painting things that have no features."

"Conversation. — Because they have many of those ideas that, to be shown, have need of eyes, gestures, voice, a whole multitude of signs that the written word does not accompany. One sees the soul in operation."

"To see the world means judging the judges."

"It is not simply a matter of distinguishing between good and evil, but also of not confusing what is laughable with what is not. To make laughable what is not is in some way to make bad what was good."

"We are afraid of having and showing a small mind and we are not afraid of having and showing a small heart."

"One ruins the mind with too much writing. — One rusts it by not writing at all."

"All ways of expressing ourselves are good if they make us understood. Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good."

"One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them. One must know how to leave one's own ideas and how to come back to them."

"It seems there is something spiritual in wine."

"In every kind of debauch there enters much coldness of soul. It is a conscious and voluntary abuse of pleasure."

"What man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm."

"It is above all the language for expressing these truths that have not yet been found."

"A person who is never duped cannot be a friend."

"I don't like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself."

"The important business of man is life, and the important business of life is death."

"To descend into ourselves, we must first lift ourselves up."