Gérard de Nerval Quotes

It is impossible for a Parisian to resist the desire to flick through the old volumes laid out by a books

I have always differentiated between two types of friends those who want proofs of friendship and those who do not. One kind loves me for myself and the others for themselves.

The last madness I’ll probably persist in is to believe myself a poet: it will be up to the critics to cure me.

Don’t wait up for me tonight, for the night will be black and white.

One third of our life is spent in sleep. It is consolation for the troubles of our waking hours or atonement for their pleasures; but I have never experienced sleep to be mere repose. After a few minutes' lethargy, a new life begins, untrammeled by the limitations of time and space, and undoubtedly similar to that which awaits us after death...

Everything is alive, everything is in motion, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays that emanate from me or from others flow directly through the infinite chain of creation whose transparent network is in continuous communication with the planets and the stars. A captive here on earth for the moment, I commune with the chorus of stars and they join in my sorrows and joys.

Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life – like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.

Illusions fall away one after another like the husks of a fruit, and that fruit is experience. It is bitter to the taste, but there is fortitude to be found in gall – forgive me my old-fashioned turns of phrase.