Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.

It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run

The historian records, but the novelist creates.