47 quotes
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.
No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.
The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament.
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)
The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory.
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)
Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.
What interest could I take in myself, except as a perfectible being? This unknown perfection, vaguely as I imagined it, exalted my will as never before in my longing to achieve it.
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently, Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them.
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
When I’m sad, I seem so grotesque to myself that it makes me laugh; when I’m cheerful, I make such idiotic jokes that I feel inclined to cry.
The most decisive actions of our life — I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future — are, more often than not, unconsidered.
Les Faux Monnayeurs (1925)
At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)
… actions whose motives he cannot understand—that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.