Drunkenness is never anything but a substitute for happiness.

Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation.

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it.

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring.

The most subtle art, the strongest and deepest art - supreme art - is the one that does not at first allow itself to be recognized.

One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.