"I eat only white foods: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals; veal, salt, coconut, chicken cooked in white water; fruit mold, rice, turnips; camphorated sausage, dough, cheese (white), cotton salad, and certain fish (skinless).""

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

"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."

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

"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?"

"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."

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

"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."