Protestant flag floats on every ocean breeze, the Catholic banner hangs
limp in the incense silence of the Vatican. Let us be Protestant, and
revere Cromwell.

_Garçon, un bock_! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner;
if my books sell I cannot help it--it is an accident.

But you live by writing.

Yes, but life is only an accident--art is eternal.

What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style; there is nothing you
won't find in Zola from Chateaubriand to the reporting in the _Figaro_.

He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper's shop; if
the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who
created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it.

And his last novel "l'Œuvre," how spun out, and for a franc a line in
the "Gil Blas." Not a single new or even exact observation. And that
terrible phrase repeated over and over again--"La Conquête de Paris."
What does it mean? I never knew anyone who thought of conquering Paris;
no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three
provincials.

You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of
breaking them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for
the pleasure of undressing them.

* * * * *