Our dreams are a second life. I have never been able to penetrate without a shudder those ivory or horned gates which separate us from the invisible world.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Dreams
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Little Things, Things
The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the “I,” under another form, continues the task of existence.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Sleep
How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: The Universe
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations?. Ignorance cannot be learned.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Knowledge
Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.
—Gerard de Nerval
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.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Friendship
The enthusiasm of old men is singularly like that of infancy.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Enthusiasm
When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind’s disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Religion, Disorder
Every flower is a soul blossoming in Nature.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Nature, One liners, Flowers
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Alfred de Musset French Poet, Playwright
Stephane Mallarme French Poet
Michel Leiris French Surrealist Writer, Ethnographer
Cesare Pavese Italian Novelist, Poet
Edgar Quinet French Intellectual
John Keats English Poet
Moliere French Playwright
Ivan Turgenev Russian Novelist, Playwright
Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) Roman Statesman, Poet
Arthur Henry Hallam English Essayist, Poet