After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne. - Stendhal

Literary men say, "In foreign countries, one can have ingenious thoughts, but one merely knows how to make a book in France." Yes, if the only goal of a book is to make an idea understood, not if it hopes to also make one feel, give some nuance of emotion.

Leave me with my life of the imagination. Your petty pestering, your details of real life, which all upset me to some degree, would drag me down from heaven. Each person dies as best he may; my wish is not to think of death except in my own way.

Les contemporains qui souffrent de certaines choses ne peuvent s'en souvenir qu'avec une horreur qui paralyse tout autre plaisir, même celui de lire un conte.