Gerard de Nerval

“It is impossible for a Parisian to resist the desire to flick through the old volumes laid out by a bookseller.[Il est impossible, pour un Parisien, de résister au désir de feuilleter de vieux ouvrages étalés par un bouquiniste.]”

“La mélancolie est une maladie qui consiste à voir les choses comme elles sont.”

“En cherchant l'oeil de Dieu, je n'ai vu qu'un orbiteVaste, noir et sans fond...”

“What is madness...to go on platonically loving a woman who will never love you.”

“Moi ? C'est une image que je poursuis, rien de plus.”

“l'imagination m'apportait des délices infinies. En recouvrant ce que les hommes appellent la raison, faudra-t-il regretter de les avoir perdues...?My imagination gave me infinite delight. In recovering what men call reason, do I have to regret the loss of these joys?...”

“You see spirits who talk to you in broad daylight, at night you see perfectly shaped, perfectly distinct phantoms, you think you remember having lived in other forms, you imagine you are growing very tall and that your head is touching the stars, the horizon of Saturn and Jupiter spreads before your eyes, bizarre creatures appear before you with all the characteristics of real beings . . . If the mind has to become completely unhinged in order to place us in communication with another world, it is clear that the mad will never be able to prove to the sane how blind they are, to say the very least!”

“الساعة الثالثة عشرة تعود ... وهي أيضًا الأولى، ودائمًا الوحيدة، - أو هي البرهة الوحيدة، فهل أنتِ ملكة، يا أنت! الأولى أو الأخيرة؟”

“Sleep occupies a third of our life. It is the consolation to the woes of our days or the woe of their pleasures; but I have never found that sleep was a rest. After a swoon of a few minutes a new life begins, freed from conditions of time and space, and doubtless like the life which awaits us after death. Who knows whether there does not exist a link between these two existences, and whether it is not possible for the soul now to bind them together?”

“Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.”

“Les premiers instants du sommeil sont l'image de la mort...”

“I have never felt any rest in sleep. For a few seconds I am numbed, then a new life begins, freed from the conditions of time and space, and doubtless similar to that state which awaits us after death. Who knows if there is not some link between those two existences and if it is not possible for the soul to unite them now?”

“Water drinkers perceive nothing but the crude and material appearance of things, while intoxication, on the contrary, dulls the eyes of the body and brightens those of the soul.”

“La pensée se glace en se traduisant en phrases.”