The only time a man thinks is when he's alone.
— Jose Bergamin
A reformer knows neither how to do nor to undo.
Only one thing has to matter for everything to matter.
Drinking spirits cannot cause spiritual damage.
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.
Art is good but it isn't the best.
The first condition for making music is not to make a noise.
If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
Do we have to talk in order to agree or agree in order to talk?
The man who spends all his time looking up to heaven is not always the best; in fact, he is usually the worst.
Who learns most from a good book is the author.
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 sin offers repentance and forgiveness; not to sin offers only punishment.
The most original sin is not the thinker's but the poet's.
The quality of a man's mind can generally be judged by the size of his wastepaper basket.
Man is a question; woman is an answer. The mistake women make today is to offer themselves as answers before being questioned.
Even if you're not going anywhere, don't get in the way.
To be thirsty and to drink water is the perfection of sensuality rarely achieved. Sometimes you drink water; other times you are thirsty.
Theology is the logic of the Devil.
Happiness is always a coincidence.
An ignorance of Marx is as frequent among Marxists as an ignorance of Christ is among Catholics.
To be ready to fail is to be prepared for success.
You can say the opposite of something you've said but you can't do the opposite of something you've done.
A woman who does not become the slave of just one man becomes the slave of all men.
When there is nothing to fear is the time to begin fearing everything.
Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.
True art tries not to attract attention in order to be noticed.
The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.
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.
True solidarity is only possible among the solitary.
A German immersed in any civilization different from his own loses a weight equivalent in volume to the amount of intelligence he displaces.
When you are listening to music it is better to cover your eyes than your ears.
Perhaps it's more merciful to forget the dead instead of remembering them.
Better than succeeding little by little is failing at one go.
There are no good or bad habits. All habits are, by definition, bad.
Sensuality without love is a sin; love without sensuality is worse than a sin.
It may be impossible to have a revolution without crimes but that does not make revolution a crime.
You can hesitate before deciding, but not once the decision is made.
A piece of advice always contains an implicit threat, just as a threat always contains an implicit piece of advice.
In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.
The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.
To light one candle to God and another to the Devil is the principle of wisdom.
