I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.
~ André Gide
To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.
The scholar seeks the artist finds.
A work of art is an exaggeration.
What another would have done as well as you do not do it. What another would have said as well as you do not say it. What another would have written as well do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of shore for a very long time.
In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.
It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.
Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
The color of truth is gray.
Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.
Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.
Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
