If there's a gun on the wall in act one, scene one, you must fire the gun by act three, scene two. If you fire a gun in act three, scene two, you must see the gun on the wall in act one, scene one.

If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.

I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don't have a passport.

One must speak about serious things seriously.

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.

[In] death at least there would be one profit; it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others; and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.