The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.

You can hesitate before deciding, but not once the decision is made.

When there is nothing to fear is the time to begin fearing everything.

A German immersed in any civilization different from his own loses a weight equivalent in volume to the amount of intelligence he displaces.

Who learns most from a good book is the author.

Man is a question; woman is an answer. The mistake women make today is to offer themselves as answers before being questioned.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don’t dance at all.

We say of an animal that it is intelligent, and we say the same thing of a woman; but in neither case is it usually appropriate, clearly for very different reasons.

If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.

Do we have to talk in order to agree or agree in order to talk?

True solidarity is only possible among the solitary.

A woman who does not become the slave of just one man becomes the slave of all men.

Theology is the logic of the Devil.

The first condition for making music is not to make a noise.

You can say the opposite of something you’ve said but you can’t do the opposite of something you’ve done.

Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.

Happiness is always a coincidence.

There are no good or bad habits. All habits are, by definition, bad.

Sensuality without love is a sin; love without sensuality is worse than a sin.

The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.

A reformer knows neither how to do nor to undo.

Pride in a man is confused with dignity; in a woman, with self-love.

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

To light one candle to God and another to the Devil is the principle of wisdom.

The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.

The man who spends all his time looking up to heaven is not always the best; in fact, he is usually the worst.

An ignorance of Marx is as frequent among Marxists as an ignorance of Christ is among Catholics.

It may be impossible to have a revolution without crimes but that does not make revolution a crime.

Effort and result are never simultaneous. In art, only the result counts.

The most original sin is not the thinker’s but the poet’s.

A piece of advice always contains an implicit threat, just as a threat always contains an implicit piece of advice.

True art tries not to attract attention in order to be noticed.

To sin offers repentance and forgiveness; not to sin offers only punishment.

Better than succeeding little by little is failing at one go.

Only one thing has to matter for everything to matter.

To be thirsty and to drink water is the perfection of sensuality rarely achieved. Sometimes you drink water; other times you are thirsty.

To be ready to fail is to be prepared for success.