The Atlas

“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.”

“I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.”

“Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.”

“What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.”

“He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”

“There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.”