The first condition for making music is not to make a noise.
Skepticism is provisional, even if it lasts a lifetime.
The only time a man thinks is when he's alone.
Art is good but it isn't the best.
To sin offers repentance and forgiveness; not to sin offers only punishment.
There are no good or bad habits. All habits are, by definition, bad.
Ignorance is learned; innocence is forgotten.
Life is a dangerous adventure, says the American, and he is half right: life is dangerous, but it's not an adventure.
Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.
Theology is the logic of the Devil.
A piece of advice always contains an implicit threat, just as a threat always contains an implicit piece of advice.
You can say the opposite of something you've said but you can't do the opposite of something you've done.
You can hesitate before deciding, but not once the decision is made.
Man is a question; woman is an answer. The mistake women make today is to offer themselves as answers before being questioned.
True art tries not to attract attention in order to be noticed.
To be young is to live in the hope of escaping youth; to be old, in the despair of having succeeded.
Erik Satie does not say the opposite of Debussy; he says the same thing only the other way round.
Sensuality without love is a sin; love without sensuality is worse than a sin.
The most original sin is not the thinker's but the poet's.
It may be impossible to have a revolution without crimes but that does not make revolution a crime.
True solidarity is only possible among the solitary.
You need to have a God, a lover, and an enemy, says the poet. Exactly: you need to have three enemies.
The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.
Even if you're not going anywhere, don't get in the way.
To be ready to fail is to be prepared for success.
Effort and result are never simultaneous. In art, only the result counts.
Pride in a man is confused with dignity; in a woman, with self-love.
To light one candle to God and another to the Devil is the principle of wisdom.
The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer.
When you are listening to music it is better to cover your eyes than your ears.
The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.
In love, it is the weak who strike and the strong who caress.
A reformer knows neither how to do nor to undo.
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.
The quality of a man's mind can generally be judged by the size of his wastepaper basket.
To be thirsty and to drink water is the perfection of sensuality rarely achieved. Sometimes you drink water; other times you are thirsty.
In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.
A German immersed in any civilization different from his own loses a weight equivalent in volume to the amount of intelligence he displaces.
Better than succeeding little by little is failing at one go.
Do we have to talk in order to agree or agree in order to talk?
When there is nothing to fear is the time to begin fearing everything.
If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.
All true tradition usually appears revolutionary.
Morality measured in centimeters: all mothers believe that only their daughters dance decently.
Those who are scandalized by a naked body--thinks the Devil--are easy prey: they are already doomed.
Tradition simply means that we need to end what began well and continue what is worth continuing
I fear only that which I love, says man, according to Montaigne. Woman replies: I love only that which I fear.
Drinking spirits cannot cause spiritual damage.
Only one thing has to matter for everything to matter.
A woman who does not become the slave of just one man becomes the slave of all men.
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.
A rocket is a reed that thinks brilliantly.
The man who spends all his time looking up to heaven is not always the best; in fact, he is usually the worst.
When I listen to the engine of my car, I might say it sounds fine, but it would not occur to me to say "What lovely music!
Who learns most from a good book is the author.
When the English have scored a goal, they think nothing more remains to be done.
An ignorance of Marx is as frequent among Marxists as an ignorance of Christ is among Catholics.
A rocket is an experiment; a star is an observation.
Happiness is always a coincidence.
What is reasoned has nothing to do with what is reasonable.
The barometer that shows "variable" is an ironic indictment of God.
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
