French Aphorists

"You can be poet and have short hair. You can be a poet and pay your rent regularly. You can be a poet and make love to your wife. (January 2, C.E.1890; p. 33)"

"It is necessary to operate through dissociation and not through the association of ideas. An association is almost always trivial. Dissociation, by breaking down, discovers hidden affinities. (January 24, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)"

"The bourgeois, are the others. (January 28, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)"

"You enter a book like a train, with a few glances behind you, with some hesitation and with the boredom of changing places and ideas. How will the trip go? What will the book be like? (February 15, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)"

"Look for the ridiculous in everything, you will find it. (February 17, C.E.1890)"

"The beggar gaze of the actor who in all circumstances, even in the most serious, turns around to make sure that he is looked at and that he has been recognized. (February 20, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 34)"

"praise is placed as money is placed: to be returned to us with interest. (March 18, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)"

"What does it matter what I do? Ask me what I think. (April 12, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)"

"The two Dumas' turned the theory of economics upside down. The father was the prodigal, and the son was the miser. (April 17, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)"

"You are twenty years old from fifteen to thirty years old. (June 28, C.E.1890)"

"Mérimée is perhaps the writer who will last the longest, because he makes less use of images than all the others, this source of the old age of style. Posterity will belong to the dry writers, to the constipated writers. (August 12, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 37)"

"Cracked plates last longer than intact plates. (September 4, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 37)"

"No matter how whole our lives are, we can always be classified into some category of thieves. (January 10, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 40)"

"George Sand, the Breton cow of literature. (February 23, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 41)"

"I don't read anything for fear of finding something good. (March 7, C.E.1891; p. 43)"

"When I am shown a drawing, I look at it just long enough to prepare what I have to say about it. (March 9, C.E.1890; p. 44)"

"Balzac is perhaps the only writer who has the right to write badly. (March 23; Vergani, p. 45)"

"Style is the oblivion of all styles. (April 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)"

"You have to take the idea that comes to you by the neck and immediately crush it on the paper. (May 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)"

"My fear was that one day I would be nothing more than a harmless Flaubert from the drawing room. (May 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)"

"Sir, I have seen on the butcher's bench several brains similar to yours. (October 16, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 48)"

"I have calculated that the literature may be enough to feed a sparrow. (November 25, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 50)"

"It is necessary for man free to take the liberty of being slave from time to time. (January 27, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 53)"

"What will save us? The faith? I don't want to have faith, and I don't want to be saved. (January 30, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 54)"

"We are all poor imbeciles (I speak for myself, of course) incapable of being good or bad for two full hours straight. (January 30; Vergani, p. 54)"

"Analyze a book! What would you say about a guest who, while eating a ripe peach, took the pieces out of his mouth to take a good look at them? (March 15, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)"

"I would like to feed the words in the palm of my hand. (March 26, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)"

"The new formula of the novel is not to make the novel. (April 6, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)"

"Oscar Wilde has breakfast next to me. He has the originality of being English, he gives you a cigarette, but he chooses it himself. It doesn't go around the board, but it moves an entire board. His face is covered with small red marks. He is huge and carries a huge cane stick. (April 7, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)"

"There are writers who don't recognize themselves, as if they don't have their noses in the middle of their faces. (April 23, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 57)"

"Irony is the modesty of humanity. (April 30, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 57)"

"The fear of boredom is the only excuse for work. (September 10, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 60)"

"When you're in a crowd, you feel like everyone is looking through your ears. (October 4, 1892; Vergani, p. 60)"

"The crit is a soldier who fires on his troops. Quoted in"