JULES RENARD

We spend our lives talking about this mystery. Our life.

Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart.

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.

Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest.

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.

It doesn't pay to say too much when you are mad enough to choke. For the word that stings the deepest is the word that is never spoke, Let the other fellow wrangle till the storm has blown away, then he'll do a heap of thinking about the things you didn't say.

On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.

The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.

There are moments when everything goes well, but don't be frightened.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.

The bourgeois are other people.

As I grow to understand life less and less I grow to love it more and more.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

Fame is a constant effort.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.