novelist, writer, dramaturge
🔗 Read on Wikipedia1821 – 1880
The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence. (11 December 1852)
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. (14 June 1853)
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. (14 August 1853)
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. (18 March 1857)
Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live. (June 1857)
Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity. (10 May 1867)
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
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.
The future is the worst thing about the present.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
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.
Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.
How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it
I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
I grew up in a hospital and as a child I played in the dissecting room
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Read in order to live.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
I am alone on this road strewn with bones and bordered by ruins! Angels have their brothers, and demons have their infernal companions. Yet I have but the sound of my scythe when it harvests, my whistling arrows, my galloping horse. Always the sound of the same wave eating away at the world
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.
The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.
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.
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!
I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
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.
When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.
The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!" and the multitude round about repeated: "Oxen! oxen!" The devout exclaimed: "Lord! Eat!"
Without ideality, there is no grandeur; without grandeur there is no beauty. Olympus is a mountain. The most effective monument will always be the Pyramids. Exuberance is better than taste; the desert is better than a streetpavement, and a savage is surely better than a hairdresser!
For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act. They are hampered by mistrust of themselves, daunted by the fear of giving offence; besides, deep feelings of affection are like respectable women; they are afraid of being found out and they go through life with downcast eyes.
He is so corrupt that he would willingly pay for the pleasure of selling himself.
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
There is no 'true'. There are merely ways of perceiving truth.
One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form. (12 August 1846)
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. (13 August 1846)
One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier. (22 October 1846)
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. (9 December 1852)