If love is a play, this play, as old as the world, fiasco or not, it is, all in all, the least bad thing that has so far been found. The roles are trite, I admit, but if the play had no value the whole universe wouldn’t know it by heart

I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them

Great artists have no country.

If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself to be dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil, make for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yield to your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a dead plant, and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers.

Taxes are a universal burden in moral as well as in civil life. There is not a pleasure, social or otherwise, which is not assessed by fate at its full value!

Disgrace is the synonym of discovery.

How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.