The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.

Art and revolt will die only with the last man.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise . . . that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.

Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence

Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.