Quote collection
985 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it-just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore."
"Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man."
"My life was lucky so that I met, I loved (and disappointed) only outstanding people."
"The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine."
"Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur."
"Proof is never definitive, after all; one has to begin again with each new person."
"I knew a pure heart who refused tot be mistrustful.... He had written at his doorstep: "From wherever you are, enter and be welcome". Who do you think responded to this lovely invitation? The militia, who made themselves at home and gutted him."
"Mon cher ami, let's not give them any pretext, no matter how small, for judging us!!! Otherwise, we'll be left in shreds. We are forced to take the same precautions as the animal trainer. If, before going into the cage, he has the misfortune to cut himself while shaving, what a feast for the wild animals!!"
"He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe"
"To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them."
"Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the most from the gradual degradation of the idea of liberty."
"We know the surrealist solution: concrete irrationality, objective risk. Poetry is the conquest, the only possible conquest, of the 'supreme position', 'a certain position of the mind from where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future... cease to be perceived in a contradictory sense.'"
"Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin."
"On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but I remembered just in time that I'd killed a man."
"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously."
"There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up."
"The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says, 'less."
"There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed."
"The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude."
"I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray."