It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.
There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.
It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten.
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
There exist only three beings worthy of respect the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.
The world only goes round by misunderstanding.
We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.