You ask me whether the Orient is up to what I imagined it to be. Yes, it is; and more than that, it extends far beyond the narrow idea I had of it. I have found, clearly delineated, everything that wa...
With a little more time, patience, and hard work, and above all with a more sensitive taste for the formal aspects of arts, he would have managed to write mediocre poetry, good enough for a lady’s alb...
There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.
The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.
I love the autumn—that melancholy season that suits memories so well. When the trees have lost their leaves, when the sky at sunset still preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered gra...
How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like mat...
Er träumte sich sein Pariser Zimmer aus. Dort wollte er das Leben eines Bohémien führen. Gitarre wollte er spielen lernen, einen Schlafrock tragen, dazu ein Samtbarett und Hausschuhe aus blauem Plüsch...
Emma repeated to herself, Good Heavens! Why did I marry?
Before marriage she thought hserself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one mean...
As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, ro...
After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the...
He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides
Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a...
She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.
Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, lit...
Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.