Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.

Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.

The beard, being a half-mask, should be forbidden by the police - It is, moreover, as a sexual symbol in the middle of the face, obscene: that is why it pleases women.