I agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author's own conscience.

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.

The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.

If many remedies are prescribed for an illness you can be sure it has no cure

Even in Siberia there is happiness.

It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.

You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.