I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

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 most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

Read in order to live.

Exuberance is better than taste.

Madame Bovary is myself.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.