The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order. |
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head. |
The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders. |
The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends. |
The poet doesn't invent. He listens. |
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. |
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed. |
The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today |
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing |
The trouble about the Academie is that by the time they get around to electing us to a seat, we really need a bed. |
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood. |
There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul. |
There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them. |
There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard. |
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing. |