Novelist

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Kebodohan adalah sesuatu yang tidak tergoyahkan, tidak ada yang menyerangnya tanpa merusaknya.

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

The future is the worst thing about the present.

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.