What best remind us of a person is precisely what we had forgotten (because it was of no importance, and we therefore left it in full possession of its strength). That is why the better part of our me...
We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.
The universe is true for us all and dissimilar to each of us.
The idea of popular art, like that of a patriotic art, if not actually dangerous seemed to me ridiculous. If the intention was to make art accessible to the people by sacrificing refinements of form,...
Only, we must allow time. But our demands as far as time is concerned are no less exorbitant than those which the heart requires in order to change. For one thing, time is the very thing that we are l...
Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’...
It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.
I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a ma...
I felt myself still reliving a past which was no longer anything more than the history of another person;
Happiness is salutary for the body but sorrow develops the powers of the spirit.
For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is e...
For often I have wished to see a person again without realising that it was simply because that personal recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom, and I have been led to believe, and to make som...
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.
That which we remember of our conduct is ignored by our closest neighbour but that which we have forgotten having said or even what we never said will cause laughter even into the next world.
It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions
The time at our disposal each day is elastic the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.
In my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them
In all countries fools outnumber the rest;
While Elstir, at my request, went on painting, I wandered about in the half-light, stopping to examine first one picture, then another.Most of those that covered the walls were not what I should chief...
This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some greater change, that she did not experience some of those exceptional moments when one thirsts for something other than what is,...